VOL. 39, NO. 2 | SUMMER 2015
www.aft.org /ae
Tenure
HOW DUE PROCESS PROTECTS
TEACHERS AND STUDENTS PAGE 4
12
20
27
32
Supporting Students
with Autism
The Influence of
A Nation at Risk
The Need for More
Teachers of Color
Education Ideas at Our
Nation’s Founding
YEAR IN REVIEW
Summer 2014
Teaching Vocabulary in the
Early Childhood Classroom
Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Can
Teachers Help Reduce Math Anxiety?
By Susan B. Neuman and Tanya S. Wright
By Sian L. Beilock and Daniel T. Willingham
The Importance of Early Learning
The Challenge of
Helping Students Write
By Chrys Dougherty
By Andy Waddell
Why Curriculum Content Is
Like Oxygen
By Carolyn Gosse and Lisa Hansel
Fall 2014
The Case for High-Quality CTE
By James R. Stone III
Combining Rigorous Academics with
Career Training
By Robert B. Schwartz
Not Your Father’s Shop Class: Bridging
the Academic-Vocational Divide
Notes from New York City
By Mike Rose
By Michael Mulgrew
A Toledo Public School Prepares
Students for College and Career
Reframing, Reimagining, and
Reinvesting in CTE
By Jennifer Dubin
By John H. Jackson and Jonathan Hasak
Winter 2014–2015
Restoring Shanker’s
Vision for Charter Schools
Student Problem-Solving in
Elementary Classrooms
By Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter
By Jessica Calarco
Want to Close the Achievement Gap?
Close the Teaching Gap
How Librarians Support
Students and Schools
By Linda Darling-Hammond
By Joanna Freeman
Pushing Back Against High Stakes for
Students with Disabilities
The Surprising Depth and
Complexity of Children’s Literature
By Bianca Tanis
By Seth Lerer
Spring 2015
Engaging Students in Reading
Puzzling Out PISA
By Daniel T. Willingham
By William H. Schmidt and Nathan A.
Burroughs
Quieting the Teacher Wars
By Dana Goldstein
Group Work for the Good
By Tom Bennett
How a Philosophy Curriculum
Took Shape and Took Off
By Diana Senechal
Helping Educators Create
Meaningful Change
By Frederick M. Hess
These issues are available at www.aft.org/ae.
WHERE WE STAND
Why Unions Must Keep Up the Fight
RANDI WEINGARTEN, AFT President
WHEN I WAS A TEACHER at Clara
Barton High School in Brooklyn, New
York, my principal suggested I use my
skills as a lawyer to teach a street law
class. One year, I decided to take a chance
and set up a mock housing court. I was so
excited that the kids were really prepared,
had learned how to interview witnesses,
how to elicit facts, how to argue the law—
in other words, how to engage in projectbased instruction with a real-life
approach—that I invited the assistant
principal to come watch. My kids were so
engaged that in some ways it was like
New York City Housing Court. Next thing
I knew, my assistant principal was telling
me the lesson wasn’t good because it was
rowdy and I could have lost control of my
class. I fought back, and because I had
legal experience I had the benefit of the
doubt. Many teachers don’t. That’s why
due process is so important.
As Rick Kahlenberg clearly explains in
this issue’s cover story, due process, also
known as tenure, gives teachers the ability
to fight for necessary services for their
kids. It’s an effective tool to recruit and
retain teachers. And while it should never
become a cloak for incompetence—if
someone can’t teach after being prepared
and supported, he or she shouldn’t be in
our profession—it’s what teachers need to
do their jobs well.
The fight we’re in to protect teachers’
due process rights—in California, New
York, and, if the rumors are true, states
like Minnesota and New Mexico—is
about a fundamental freedom that strikes
at the heart of what it means to be a
teacher, to create, to innovate, to find new
ways to light the spark in the minds of our
kids that could become the fire that sets
them on a path to a brighter future. We all
remember that moment, or that teacher.
Due process protects those moments and
those teachers.
However, this attack on the teaching
profession isn’t about what’s best for kids.
It’s part of a larger effort to dismantle
Follow Randi Weingarten: twitter.com/rweingarten.
public education, teacher voice, and the
labor movement—a coordinated campaign led by wealthy and anti-union
interests like the Koch brothers, Americans for Prosperity, and the hedge funders.
It’s ultimately about our economy, our
democracy, and who holds the power.
Our adversaries don’t want a virtuous
cycle that gives everyone a shot at the
American dream, with access to a
high-quality public education, jobs with
fair wages, and a secure retirement—all of
Court may decide to consider related
issues in Friedrichs v. California Teachers
Association. The plaintiffs in Friedrichs
aim to break unions by eliminating the
fee paid by those who have union benefits
but don’t join. Agency fee reflects the cost
to the union of representing all workers in
a bargaining unit. It’s also known as fair
share, because it’s only fair if everyone
who benefits from the services a union
provides also chips in to cover the cost of
those benefits.
These court cases are part of a growing effort
to silence working people and stifle their
economic aspirations.
which help each generation climb the
ladder of opportunity and help our
communities thrive. They don’t want to
change the status quo of the greatest
income inequality since the Great
Depression. So they seek to defund and
deprofessionalize public education.
This relentless assault continues in our
nation’s statehouses—with governors like
Scott Walker, Bruce Rauner, and even
Andrew Cuomo—stacking the deck
against students, families, and educators.
This relentless assault continues in the
courts with cases that would “defund
unions, destroy solidarity, and erase the
benefits of union membership—even
while bizarrely admitting that union
membership does, in fact, bring workers
… strong benefits,” as Moshe Marvit wrote
in In These Times.
Take a recent court case filed in
California. In Bain v. California Teachers
Association, the argument isn’t about
whether unions provide much-needed
benefits. Instead, the plaintiffs are
claiming that as nonmembers of a union,
they should still get the full benefits of
belonging to a union, for free.
On a national level, the U.S. Supreme
These court cases are part of a growing
effort to silence working people and stifle
their economic aspirations. With inequality in America reaching historic heights
and economic polarization at its most
extreme, people are increasingly turning
to the labor movement for fairness,
opportunity, justice, and real change.
Union members have higher wages,
access to healthcare, a secure retirement,
and due process. This has a multiplier
effect, invigorating communities and
growing the middle class. Our opponents
understand this. They are stepping up the
assault in our nation’s legislatures and in
our courts because they know that unions
and a strong public sector help create
shared prosperity.
Which is why we must keep up the
fight. Because as these attacks have made
clear, power never yields willingly.
We’ve weathered these storms before,
and we’ve come out stronger for it—by
standing together. This may not be a fight
we sought, but it’s also not a fight we
intend to lose. The future of the middle
class, the promise of high-quality public
education, and the strength of our
democracy all depend on us.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
1
Download this issue for free at www.aft.org/ae.
VOL. 39, NO. 2 | SUMMER 2015
www.aft.org /ae
4
OUR MISSION
Tenure
How Due Process Protects
Teachers and Students
By Richard D. Kahlenberg
For more than 100 years, tenure has provided due process rights to teachers
who have demonstrated competence after a probationary period. But tenure
is under attack, with critics wrongfully portraying it as a job for life. While
tenure laws were established to protect teachers from favoritism and to ensure
students were educated free from political whims, such laws remain necessary
today given the fixation on high-stakes testing and the tying of students’ test
scores to teacher evaluations. Yet corporate reformers have seized on tenure
as the root cause of educational inequality in an attempt to diminish the
power of unions and to detract from the real threats to public education:
poverty and segregation.
12
Connecting the Dots
today and are ones that teachers
must confront if they are to successfully advocate for their students and
push back against top-down
reforms.
Supporting Students with
Autism Spectrum Disorder
By Samuel L. Odom and
Connie Wong
As the rates of students
with autism spectrum
disorder soar, educators are increasingly
teaching such students but may be
unsure how to help
them succeed. An
extensive research
review has found that 27
specific techniques can
promote the development
and learning of students with
autism spectrum disorder.
20
Escaping the Shadow
24 A Closer Look at the
Commission’s Work
By Tommy Tomlinson
27
The Professional Educator
The Need for More
Teachers of Color
By José Luis Vilson
A New York City teacher recounts
his path to the profession and
discusses the importance of
attracting and retaining a diverse
educator workforce.
32
A Window to the Past
A Nation at Risk and Its
Far-Reaching Influence
What an Essay Contest Reveals
about Early American Education
By Jal Mehta
By Benjamin Justice
Published in 1983, A Nation at Risk
continues to inform education
policy. The report declared public
education in crisis, criticized the
performance of American students
compared with their international
peers, and called for more educator
accountability. Such claims persist
In the 1790s, the American Philosophical Society sponsored an essay
contest to solicit opinions from the
public about how the United States
should educate its citizens. Contest
submissions reveal what education
ideas were percolating at our
nation’s founding.
The American Federation of Teachers is
a union of professionals that champions
fairness; democracy; economic
opportunity; and high-quality public
education, healthcare and public
services for our students, their families
and our communities. We are committed
to advancing these principles through
community engagement, organizing,
collective bargaining and political
activism, and especially through the work
our members do.
RANDI WEINGARTEN
President
LORRETTA JOHNSON
Secretary-Treasurer
MARY CATHRYN RICKER
Executive Vice President
AMY M. HIGHTOWER
Editor
JENNIFER DUBIN
Managing Editor
MIKE ROSE
Contributing Writer
JANE FELLER
SEAN LISHANSKY
Copyeditors
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Editorial Assistant
JENNIFER CHANG
Art Director
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Graphic Designer
JENNIFER BERNEY
Production Coordinator
AMERICAN EDUCATOR (ISSN 0148-432X, USPS 008-462)
is published quarterly by the American Federation of
Teachers, 555 New Jersey Ave. NW, Washington, DC
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© 2015 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, AFL-CIO
Cover illustration:
PAUL ZWOLAK
2
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
MAILBOX
–KATHY LOOMIS
Edison Elementary School
Hammond, IN
od
rk for the Go
egy
Group Wo
lar Classroom Strat
behind One Popu
arch
Unpacking the Rese
take this on given their myriad responsibilities is like asking them to teach art or
music or a foreign language.
The author neglects to mention that
school librarians are specialists in
children’s literature, who know how to
find the right book for any child. We
actually read children’s literature widely
to advise our students what to read.
Believe me, if a child wants a certain
book, we will find a way to provide it.
–SARA SAYIGH
Chicago Public Schools
Chicago, IL
made
United States have
colleagues in the
many of my teacher
s.
nt for Educasimilar discoverie
from the U.K. Departme
In 2004, I had just emerged program into teaching, where I had
four
nt
to 18-year-olds for
ing, a
tion’s Fast Track recruitme
been teaching 11nguistic Programm
t wasn’t until I had
tly misled. Up until
learning about Neuro-Li
according
I had been consisten
to sort my students
the best spent weekends
years that I realized
mulBrain Gym, and how
training to provide
called
teacher
possessed
my
program
students
my
and
that point I had trusted
styles.* I was told that
discipline of teaching
the more
discovered in the
could to their learning and it was strongly hinted to me that
of what had been
theory by which I
the better their
tiple intelligences,
shown a method or
date into my lessons,
it would have been
learning. If I had been
I could accommo
efficiently, I assumed
initial classroom design
My
that technology
more
met.
job
be
my
assumed
I
perform
evidence.
natives would
horseshoes
of experience and
pro- needs as digital
upon, and tables and
forged in the crucible
conchemistry, for example,
columns was frowned
research
say,
and
the
rows
of
told,
teaching,
was
And all because, I
what we knew about
But I found the opposite.
were recommended.
accumulative way.
school teacher in the
gressed in a linear,
each avenue.
the topics. I won
religious studies high
was consid- firmed
Often, it barely addressed
As a philosophy and
good deal of what
Except that it didn’t.
y, where I was given
I discovered that a
I believe
United Kingdom,
p at Cambridge Universit the mighty Oz of
unsubstantiated.
a teacher fellowshi
my profession was
curtain of
ered orthodoxy in
to pull back the
the univernavigate
the opportunity
to
. As I learned
n Community research. It was an epiphany
and papers, I was
at the Jo Richardso
of education journals
a
high school teacher
for the Times Educa- sity’s endless libraries
d as impertinence:
Tom Bennett is a
teacher
England. He is a columnist
that at first I dismisse
a new teacher
School in East London, one of the United Kingdom’s most popular
struck by a thought
recommended as
and
training and classroom
tional Supplement
of research I had been
books about teacher
ed more than good deal
He has written four
By Tom Bennett
I
BY JAMES YANG
I cannot thank you enough for the article
by Tom Bennett, “Group Work for the
Good,” which appeared in the Spring 2015
issue of American Educator. Due to the
rubric adopted by my state, the K–5
teachers in our school district are
required to use group work in every
lesson, and we lose points on our evaluation if it is not included. I teach music to
students once or twice a week, and group
work is required of me as well. Though it
is appropriate at times, group work is only
one of the many tools available to
teachers, as opposed to something that
we do just for the sake of doing it.
Willingham writes about providing
students with free books to engage them
and help their reading improve. We
school librarians have been doing that
very thing—and we see the positive
ILLUSTRATIONS
Group Work as an Option
bloggers.
have been download
on
his online resources
, a grass-roots organizati
management, and
with permis2013, he started researchED
1 million times. In
This article is adapted
Visit the
research together.
Routledge, 2013).
to bring teachers and
Teacher Proof (London:Francis and Routledge books
&
sion from his book
f.co.uk. Many Taylor
publisher at www.tand
as eBooks.
are now available
behind learning styles,
Editors’ reply:
and
see “Do Visual, Auditory,
in the
Kinesthetic Instruction?”
*For more about the research
Visual, Auditory, and
/ae/summer2005/
Need
Kinesthetic Learners
available at www.aft.org
of American Educator,
Summer 2005 issue
willingham.
2015
EDUCATOR | SPRING
32 AMERICAN
Librarians Can Help
As a high school librarian, I was amazed
that the Spring issue’s cover article, “For
the Love of Reading” by Daniel T.
Willingham, did not once mention the
important role of the school librarian.
Most of the impediments to reading that
the author mentions could be addressed
by having a trained librarian in every
school with a budget to curate an
appropriate collection of books for the
children of that school.
impact on our students—even though we
struggle with adequate funding to support
our work.
Willingham also writes about the
importance of classroom teachers “really
knowing each child” so they can select
books based on a student’s interests and
needs. But asking classroom teachers to
As the article “A Window to the Past” on
page 32 of this issue makes clear, educating the mass of American citizens was a
widely debated topic at the birth of our
nation. To that end, an essay contest run
by the American Philosophical Society in
the 1790s sought to gather the education
opinions of ordinary people.
To paraphrase the contest question,
the society asked contestants to “design
the best system of education for the
United States, appropriate for the wealthy
as well as the poor.” Submissions offered a
range of ideas: focusing on the liberal
arts, teaching children how to read and
write, instructing them in morality,
creating national textbooks, establishing
a national university, making public
education compulsory for boys and men,
and funding schools through a property
tax, among others.
What if a similar contest were held
today? How would you as an educator
answer? Email us in a few short paragraphs at [email protected] with your thoughts
on the ways our country could and should
make public education “the best system of
education” for all. As teachers, you know
firsthand what works for your students.
We’d love to hear from you.
–EDITORS
We agree that the school librarian is an
important person in a child’s reading life.
Although Daniel T. Willingham’s article
did not mention it, his book, Raising Kids
Who Read: What Parents and Teachers
Can Do, from which his article is adapted,
does highlight the role that librarians play
in engaging students to read. “Librarians
are a vastly underappreciated resource,”
Willingham writes in chapter 10. “They
have wide knowledge of and passion for
books, and are eager to help.” For more on
the work of school librarians, see Joanna
Freeman’s article “Beyond the Stacks” in
the Winter 2014–2015 issue of American
Educator, available at www.aft.org/ae/
winter2014-2015/freeman.
Write to us!
We welcome comments on
American Educator articles. Address letters
to Editor, American Educator, 555 New
Jersey Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20001, or
send comments via email to [email protected].
Letters selected for publication may be
edited for space and clarity. Please include
your phone number or email address so we
may contact you if necessary.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
3
Tenure
How Due Process Protects Teachers and Students
By Richard D. Kahlenberg
T
ILLUSTRATIONS BY PAUL ZWOLAK
eacher tenure rights, first established more than a century ago, are under unprecedented attack. Tenure—
which was enacted to protect students’ education and
those who provide it—is under assault from coast to
coast, in state legislatures, in state courtrooms, and in the media.
In June 2014, in the case of Vergara v. California, a state court
judge struck down teacher tenure and seniority laws as a violation of the state’s constitution.* Former CNN and NBC journalist
Campbell Brown has championed a copycat case, Wright v. New
York, challenging the Empire State’s tenure law (which was consolidated with another New York case challenging tenure,
Davids v. New York). Similar cases are reportedly in the works in
several other states.1
Meanwhile, with incentives from the federal Race to the Top
Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is the
author of Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools,
Unions, Race, and Democracy (2007) and a coauthor of A Smarter Charter: Finding What Works for Charter Schools and Public Education (2014).
Portions of this article draw upon his articles “Abolish Tenure?” (Chronicle
of Higher Education, March 22, 2012) and “Tenure Is Not the Problem”
(Slate, June 13, 2014).
4
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
program, 18 states have recently weakened tenure laws, and
Florida and North Carolina sought to eliminate tenure entirely.2
According to the Education Commission of the States, in order
to give greater weight to so-called performance metrics, 10 states
prohibited using tenure or seniority as a primary factor in layoff
decisions in 2014, up from five in 2012.3
Leading media outlets have joined in the drumbeat against
tenure. A 2010 Newsweek cover story suggested that “the key to
saving American education” is: “We must fire bad teachers.”4 In
2014, the cover of Time magazine showed a judge’s mallet crushing an apple. The headline, referencing the Vergara case, read,
“Rotten Apples: It’s Nearly Impossible to Fire a Bad Teacher;
Some Tech Millionaires May Have Found a Way to Change That.”5
Amidst this sea of negative publicity for educators, journalist
Dana Goldstein wrote that “the ineffective tenured teacher has
emerged as a feared character,” like “crack babies or welfare
queens” from earlier eras.6 Labor attorney Thomas Geoghegan
quipped that the “bad teacher” meme is so strong that one can
imagine a young Marlon Brando, altering his famous line from
On the Waterfront to say: “I … I could have been a contender—
but I got that old Miss Grundy in the fourth grade!”7
Of course, conservatives have long attacked policies such as
*California is appealing the decision.
tenure that constrain the ability of managers to fire whomever
they want, but the latest assaults on tenure have invoked liberal
egalitarian ideals. In the Vergara case, Judge Rolf Treu, a Republican appointee, claimed that the case, funded by a Silicon Valley
millionaire, was about championing the rights of poor and
minority students. Treu made a big show of comparing his decision weakening teacher tenure rights to the landmark cases of
Brown v. Board of Education (which promoted school desegregation) and Serrano v. Priest (which required equity in education
spending).8 Treu used a serious and pressing problem—that
low-income students often have the weakest and least experienced teachers—not as an argument for addressing segregation
or inadequate financial resources but instead as the rationale
for weakening tenure rights.
amaze me that with all the problems in education, we are so fixated
on the issue of teacher tenure. What is really going on?
What Is Tenure?
American public school teachers are typically awarded tenure
after a probationary period of about three years.11 Once a teacher
has earned tenure, also known as due process, he or she has a right
to know why a discharge is being sought by the employer and a
right to have the issue decided by an impartial body. In the words
of the University of Pennsylvania’s Richard Ingersoll, “Typically,
tenure guarantees that teachers must be given reason, documentation, and a hearing prior to being fired.”12 The practice recognizes that in a mass profession like public school teaching, there
will be some poor performers among the ranks of tenured teach-
Tenure provides teachers who have
demonstrated competence after a
probationary period with due process
rights before being fired.
Curiously, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan endorsed the
decision, as did leading liberal lawyers like Laurence Tribe and
David Boies. Broad Foundation President Bruce Reed, a former
staffer to Vice President Joe Biden, suggested that the ruling was
“another big victory” for students of color, in the tradition of Brown.9
(Other liberals had a more sober response. Erwin Chemerinsky, a
constitutional law scholar and dean of the University of California,
Irvine, School of Law, for example, has criticized Treu’s reasoning,
arguing that attacking tenure will do little to improve school
quality.10)
All the attention to tenure—especially from progressives—raises
an important question: What is it exactly? The legal definition is
simple: tenure provides those teachers who have demonstrated
competence after a probationary period with due process rights
before being fired. It is not, as critics contend, a guaranteed job for
life. As I explain in this article, historically, tenure laws developed
to protect teachers from favoritism and nepotism and to ensure that
students received an education subject to neither political whims
nor arbitrary administrative decisions. Tenure protections are still
necessary today, especially given the current fixation on high-stakes
testing and the linking of students’ test scores to teacher evaluations. I believe that rather than doing away with tenure, dismissal
procedures could be mended to strike the right balance between
providing fairness to good teachers and facilitating the removal of
incompetent ones. I also believe there are innovative ways to connect low-income students with great teachers. Yet, it continues to
ers. Tenure does not prevent their termination, but it does require
that employers show “just cause” (a reasonable ground for action)
for termination.
Critics claim that due process has, in practice, turned into “uber
due process,” as Judge Treu suggested.13 In Wright v. New York,
plaintiffs’ attorney Jay Lefkowitz cited a study from 2004–2008,
which claimed that legal proceedings to remove tenure from teachers for pedagogical incompetence dragged on for an average of 830
days, at an average cost of $313,000.14 The length and cost of proceedings means very few principals will pursue termination cases,
the argument runs. Hoover Institution critic Terry Moe claims that
having tenure means teachers who “don’t murder someone or
molest a child or stop showing up for work” are “assured of being
able to continue in their job for as long as they want. … America’s
private sector workers can only dream of such a thing: a guaranteed,
totally secure job.”15
In places like Chicago, the idea that tenure provides a “totally
secure jobӠ would presumably surprise tenured teachers who were
fired under the federally funded “turnaround schools” program, in
which at least 50 percent of teachers, including those with tenure,
were replaced.16 Overall, Goldstein reports that in 2007, 2.1 percent
of American public school teachers, including tenured teachers, were
fired for cause.17 She notes there are no comparable data for the pri†
In other cities, such as New York City, tenured teachers can be transferred to other
schools or placed into a reserve pool, but they don’t lose employment.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
5
vate sector,18 but in 2012, private sector companies lost less than 2
percent of their workforce through firings and layoffs combined.19
Some of the misunderstanding about the meaning of teacher
tenure in the K–12 setting may stem from the fact that the term
“tenure” is also applied to university professors. But as David
Cohen, a veteran teacher, noted in the Washington Post, tenure for
K–12 educators is “not tenure, in the sense that university professors
have tenure,” which is typically won after seven or eight years and
comes with stronger protections.20
While it is certainly true that some K–12 termination proceedings
drag on too long at too great an expense, in many places, significant
reforms have been enacted in recent years. Although Lefkowitz cited
an average of 830 days for proceedings in the New York tenure case,
But patronage hiring (and firing) was not the only abuse tenure
sought to prevent. Tenure rights also were designed to shield teachers from improper political influence over their activities both
outside and inside the classroom. Some politicians, for example,
punished teachers for membership in a union. In 1917, after the
Chicago Board of Education president, Jacob Loeb, fired teachers
for union activism, good-government reformers allied with unionists to pass tenure protections for teachers.29
During World War I, a teacher who failed to buy enough Liberty
Bonds in support of the war was placed under scrutiny in certain
districts, Swarthmore College historian Marjorie Murphy writes. “If
she failed to express enthusiasm for the war, or intimated that war
was anything but glorious, she stood a good chance of dismissal.”30
Tenure rights came out of the
progressive good-government
movement as a way to improve
the quality of teaching and
education for children.
a more recent analysis using New York State Education Department
data found that in 2013, disciplinary cases took, on average, 177 days
statewide.21 In New York City, United Federation of Teachers data
show that the median length of proceedings is 105 days.22 For cases
of alleged misconduct and wrongdoing (as opposed to incompetence), the AFT in 2011 adopted expert Kenneth Feinberg’s recommendations for an expedited 100-day process.23 In 2012, Connecticut
adopted an 85-day policy for terminations, unless there is agreement
from both sides to extend the process.24
Why Was Tenure Developed?
Teacher tenure began in New Jersey in 1909.25 Why was it first
adopted? From the critics of tenure, one might imagine teacher tenure being dreamed up by union “hacks” figuring out a way to protect
incompetent members. But in fact, tenure rights came out of the
progressive good-government movement as a way to improve the
quality of teaching and education for children. New Jersey’s law drew
on the well-regarded Prussian education system and was backed by
Harvard President Charles William Eliot in New York City, Dana
Goldstein writes, “as a clean government reform after decades of
politically influenced teacher appointments, in which schools
were part of the patronage machine.”26 Education historian Diane
Ravitch notes that before tenure was adopted in New York City, ward
officers could dismiss an entire staff of qualified teachers and replace
them with their own choices.27 With tenure, as former AFT President
Albert Shanker noted, “An elected politician can’t say, ‘I’m going to
fire you because you didn’t support me in the last election.’”28
6
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
Jewish socialist teachers in New York City who opposed the war were
fired under the broad rubric of “conduct unbecoming a teacher.”31
Quaker teachers were also fired because of their pacifist objections to the war.32 Later, during the civil rights movement, half of
southern states voted to revoke teacher licenses for membership in
organizations like the NAACP that supported school integration.33
Tenure was also designed to protect academic freedom inside
the classroom. The Scopes trial in the 1920s, for example, highlighted the need to protect the ability of teachers to educate students about evolution in the face of opposition from religious
fundamentalists.
In addition, tenure provided a bulwark against sex and race
discrimination. During the Great Depression, when jobs were
scarce, women teachers were often fired once they were married.
According to Murphy, one-third of large cities in 1930 actually had
laws prohibiting marriage for female teachers.34 In states with tenure, female teachers were protected.
Tenure also provided a way to shield black teachers from racist
principals. Indeed, Dana Goldstein notes that in 1955, in reaction
to Brown v. Board of Education, several southern states—Alabama,
Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and
Virginia—repealed tenure laws in order to allow white officials to
easily fire black teachers in newly integrated schools.35
Why Tenure Is Still Necessary Today
Some critics of tenure argue that while such policies were once
necessary, the passage of civil service laws to protect against patron-
age hiring, civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on
race and sex, and labor laws to protect union organizing, adequately
address the abuses against which tenure was meant to shield teachers. But tenure laws supplement civil service, civil rights, and labor
laws in two important respects.
First, tenure significantly strengthens legal protections embodied in civil service, civil rights, and labor laws by shifting to the
employer the burden to prove the termination is justified. Moshe
Marvit, a labor and civil rights attorney as well as a Century Foundation fellow, notes, “Civil rights laws may protect teachers from being
fired because of race or sex, but under a civil rights frame it is still
incumbent upon the teacher to prove that the employer acted the
way it did because of race or sex. Under a tenure model, the
employer must prove it has cause to fire the teacher. Flipping that
burden is huge, both in terms of expenditure of resources and possibilities of success.”36
Second, tenure protects a range of discriminatory firings not
covered under race and gender antidiscrimination laws. As Leo
Casey, executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute, notes,
tenure, by requiring a just cause for termination, guards against an
employer’s discrimination based on a teacher’s “political views, her
friends, or the fact that she is an experienced teacher, earning a
higher salary, in times of austerity and budget cuts.”37
Most Americans think this type of discrimination is already
illegal. Pauline Kim, of Washington University School of Law, conducted polls of workers in California, Missouri, and New York and
found that approximately 90 percent of employees thought it was
unlawful to fire someone based on personal dislike, and more than
80 percent thought it was illegal to fire an employee and replace
him or her with someone willing to work for less.38
In fact, with the exception of certain categories of discrimination—such as race, gender, and national origin—employers are
generally free to fire nontenured employees for any reason. As
Cynthia Estlund, of New York University School of Law, writes,
“Absent a contractual provision for job security or a prohibited
discriminatory or retaliatory motive, it remains true in every American jurisdiction, except Montana, that employees are subject to
discharge without justification.”39
While most American workers are “at will” employees by custom, there is a strong case to be made that they should have due
process rights of the type that Montana citizens, and most union
members, have. As Casey writes in Education Week, due process is
“the foundation of all other rights, because, without it, individuals
can be penalized for exercising such rights as freedom of expression, assembly, press, and association.”40 If you can be fired for
exercising your free speech rights, most people will stay quiet. And
it’s fundamentally unfair when experienced employees are laid off
to make room for new, cheaper ones.
But the argument for tenure—and the requirement of “just
cause” firing—is especially compelling in the case of educators.
Teachers feel enormous pressure from parents, principals, and
school board members to take actions that may not be in the best
interests of students. Teacher and blogger Peter Greene notes that
because teachers “answer to a hundred different bosses,” they “need
their own special set of protections.”41 Because all adults, from parents to school board members, have themselves attended school,
they feel qualified to weigh in on how educators should teach,
while they would never tell a surgeon or an auto mechanic what to
do. Richard Casagrande, a lawyer for the New York State United
Teachers, made a profound point when he said during recent litigation that tenure laws are “not a gift to teachers. These laws empower
teachers to teach well.”42
To begin with, teachers need tenure to stand up to outsiders who
would instruct them on how to teach politically sensitive topics. A
science teacher in a fundamentalist community who wants to teach
evolution, not pseudoscientific creationism or intelligent design,
needs tenure protection. So does a sex-ed teacher who doesn’t want
to be fired for giving students practical information about how to
Teachers need tenure to stand up
to outsiders who would instruct
them on how to teach politically
sensitive topics.
avoid getting HIV. So does an English teacher who wants to assign
a controversial and thought-provoking novel.43
These concerns are hardly theoretical. In 2005, the Kansas Board
of Education adopted science standards that challenged mainstream evolutionary theory and was cheered by proponents of
intelligent design.44 (The standard was later repealed.45) In 2010,
conservatives on the Texas Board of Education proposed renaming
the slave trade the “Atlantic triangular trade,” an effort that was later
dropped.46 And in 2012, the Utah legislature passed (and the governor vetoed) a bill to ban instruction on homosexuality and
contraception.47
The importance of academic freedom for K–12 teachers is sometimes underestimated. In 2012, the editors of the New Republic said
they supported tenure for college faculty because universities are
“our country’s idea factories.” They continued, “But this rationale
doesn’t apply at the K–12 level.” Really? While university professors
“explore ideas,” so do teachers. Every day, they seek to spark ideas,
sometimes controversial ones, in the tender minds of young students, and they need protection from school board members who
may overreach. Indeed, shouldn’t we prize elementary and secondary teachers who encourage students to think for themselves or
come up with solutions not found in any textbook?
Tenure also protects teachers from well-connected parents who
may push their own children’s interests to the detriment of others.
Tenure protects teachers with high standards from the wrath of
parents angry that their children received poor grades or were disciplined for misbehavior. Without tenure, will a teacher give a failing
grade to the son of an influential parent who might shorten that
teacher’s career?48 Without tenure, will the teacher be able to resist
the powerful parent who wants his or her mediocre daughter to get
the lead part in the play?49 Without tenure, what happens when
uninformed but powerful parents demand that a highly trained
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
7
special education teacher exclude students with special needs from
the classroom?
Tenure also allows teachers to stand up and openly disagree with
a boss pushing a faddish but unproven educational practice, without the fear of being fired. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, for example,
administrators asked teachers to post student test scores on the
walls of classrooms. When an untenured English teacher (who was
also a union official) objected publicly in 2014 that this was an
unsound tactic and was humiliating to students, he was fired,
despite having previously received excellent ratings.50 Tenure would
have ensured a fair process.
More generally, tenure empowers teachers to become more
involved in school decisions. Research finds that when teachers
have a say in how schools are run, they are more likely to be invested
in the school and to stay longer, and are more engaged with colleagues in cooperative work.51 Having this sort of strong culture,
furthermore, is linked to increased academic achievement for
students.52 By contrast, schools that lack teacher voice have higher
turnover, which is wasteful and disruptive to student learning.53 As
Leo Casey notes, due process allows a teacher “to speak up for her
students, to advocate for a different educational approach or a different school policy, to report administrative wrongdoing, to criticize the actions of the district or school leadership, and to be
involved with her union.”54 An attack on tenure is really an attack
on any semblance of workplace democracy.
Eliminating tenure reduces teacher voice in a very direct way.
Peter Greene argues in the Huffington Post: “It’s not the firing. It’s
the threat of firing” that shifts the power balance between teachers
and administrators. “The threat of firing allows other people to
control every day of that teacher’s career. ... It takes all the powerful
people a teacher must deal with and arms each one with a nuclear
device.” Greene concludes, “The biggest problem with the destruction of tenure is not that a handful of teachers will lose their jobs,
but that entire buildings full of teachers will lose the freedom to do
their jobs well.”55
Teacher tenure is an important feature of American public education for yet another reason: it is a significant carrot for attracting
qualified candidates to the teaching profession. Teacher recruitment and retention is difficult, in part because of relatively low pay
for college-educated professionals ($57,000 a year was the mean
salary in 201256). In the 1940s, female teachers earned more than 70
percent of all female college-educated workers, while male teachers
earned slightly more than the typical male graduate. Today, teacher
pay is in the 30th percentile for male college graduates and the 40th
percentile for female college graduates.57 Overall, American teachers make 68 percent of what other college-educated Americans
make, on average, whereas in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, the average is 88 percent.58 South
Korean teachers have 250 percent of the local buying power of
American teachers.59
Part of what offsets low American salaries—and allows American schools to continue to attract talent—is tenure. The polling of
teachers by the Hoover Institution’s Terry Moe suggests that “tenure
is a highly valuable form of compensation.” In a 2003 survey, Moe
found that a majority of teachers would need to be paid 50 percent
more to give up tenure. Writing in 2011, Moe concluded that with
average teacher salaries above $50,000, “most teachers see the
security of tenure as being worth tens of thousands of dollars a
8
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
year.”60 Polling by Public Agenda and Education Sector came to
similar conclusions.61 This is not to suggest that the existence of
tenure excuses low teacher pay; other countries provide higher pay
and tenure to attract the very best talent. But the basic law of supply
and demand suggests that if you take away tenure, school districts
would be faced with one of two choices: accept a diminished pool
of applicants, or significantly increase salaries in order to keep quality at its current levels.
Because the latter option is not in the cards, Ken Futernick, of
California State University, Sacramento, notes that “administrators’
power to fire teachers without real due process will only exacerbate
the teacher recruitment problem.”62 University of California, Berkeley, economist Jesse Rothstein’s research found that “firing bad
teachers actually makes it harder to recruit new ones” because new
teachers don’t know whether, once on the job, they will turn out to
be strong or weak educators.63
Abolishing tenure would make it especially hard to recruit in
schools with lots of low-income students—the purported beneficiaries of the Vergara litigation. Under current accountability
standards, teaching in a high-poverty school is risky because lowincome students face extra obstacles and so, on average, perform
less well academically than middle-class students. Strong tenure
laws allow dedicated, high-quality teachers to know they are
unlikely to be fired. But as Alyssa Hadley Dunn writes in the Washington Post, “Without due process rights, it is even less likely that
qualified teachers will want to work in high-needs schools with
difficult conditions, because it would also mean that students’
lower test scores could jeopardize their employment with no
available recourse.”64
For all these reasons, it is not surprising that states with strong
tenure laws (and strong unions to back up these laws) tend to perform better than those with weak laws. As former teacher Brian
Jones wrote in the New York Times, “If teacher tenure is an important obstacle to achievement, Mississippi (with no teacher tenure)
should have stellar schools and Massachusetts (with teacher tenure) should have failing ones. Instead, it’s the other way around.”65
Likewise, some of the leading education systems in the world—
Germany, Japan, and South Korea, for example—have long had
tenure protections even stronger than those in the United States.66
Can Tenure Laws Be Improved?
If tenure laws are fundamentally sound, that does not mean the
statutes in all 50 states are perfect. Reasonable reforms are underway, but they are needed in more places in two areas: the process
by which tenure is earned, and the procedure by which ineffective
tenured teachers are removed.
To begin with, getting tenure should mean something, so teachers need a sufficiently long period to demonstrate skills and not
everyone who tries should succeed. Most states employ a three-year
probationary period, and in Vergara, Judge Treu was correct to note
that California’s period of less than two years is an outlier* and not
optimal.67 Indeed, such a short time frame is unfair to teachers, as
a decision must be made before they are able to fully demonstrate
their mastery of the craft.
*As noted by Judge Treu in the Vergara v. California decision, California’s tenure
statute requires that teachers be notified of a decision on their tenure in March of
their second year on the job. The period, therefore, is in practice closer to 18 months
than two years.
With respect to the rigor of tenure, there should not be a set
percentage of teachers who fail, but neither should success be
automatic. In 2007, 97 percent of New York City public school teachers who applied got tenure.68 That’s a high figure, even when one
acknowledges that large numbers of teachers leave the profession
before they apply for tenure, often because they realize they are not
cut out for teaching or because principals counsel them out of the
profession. However, over time, a set of reforms was instituted in
New York City making tenure more rigorous. By the 2013–2014
school year, 60 percent of New York City teachers who were eligible
for tenure received it, 38 percent were deferred, and 2 percent were
denied.69 It remains unclear how many of the deferred cases will
eventually receive tenure—and they should not be left in limbo for
too long—but clearly, achieving on-time tenure means something
So what is to be done? Many of those who believe that eliminating tenure is out of the question, and that defending teacher incompetence is equally intolerable, have converged around a third way:
tenure combined with peer assistance and review. First used in
Toledo, Ohio, peer assistance and review involves master teachers
evaluating new and veteran educators, providing assistance, and
in some cases recommending termination of employment.† Under
the plan, the brainchild of Dal Lawrence, former president of the
Toledo Federation of Teachers, Toledo set up a nine-member advisory board (consisting of five teachers and four administrators) to
make decisions on assisting and, if necessary, terminating the
employment of new and veteran teachers. Six votes are required for
action.77 Evaluators teach the same subject as teachers being evaluated but come from different schools.78
Many have converged around
another way: tenure combined
with peer assistance and review.
more for those who win it in New York City than it did in the past.
How could the procedures for removing inadequate tenured
teachers be improved? With nearly 3.4 million public school teachers in the United States, there are five times as many people in the
profession as there are in medicine or law.70 Given those large
numbers, it is inevitable that some subpar teachers will slip through
the tenure process.
Teachers realize this. In a 2008 poll, almost half of teachers said
they personally knew a colleague who should not be in the classroom.71 In a 2014 survey, teachers said 8 percent of colleagues
deserved a letter grade of D, and 5 percent an F.72
Union heads also acknowledge the situation. These leaders serve
not only the relatively small number of incompetent teachers in the
system but the far greater number of strong teachers who want
underperforming colleagues out of the profession. As Shanker
noted years ago, “Teachers have to live with the results of other
people’s bad teaching—the students who don’t know anything.”73
As far back as 2004, AFT President Randi Weingarten, president of
the United Federation of Teachers at the time, declared, “This is a
union that is not about just keeping people. We are about keeping
qualified people.”74
In a 2008 poll, 66 percent of teachers said they would favor their
local union playing a role in guiding ineffective teachers out of the
profession.75 At the same time, teachers suggest in polls that they
don’t want to go to the other extreme, and they oppose eliminating
tenure by a margin of 77-23 percent.76
At first, peer review was hugely controversial. When Shanker
endorsed the concept in 1984, he estimated that only 10–20 percent
of teachers supported the idea. But, he said, it was time to acknowledge “that some teachers are excellent, some are very good, some
are good, and some are terrible.”79 The charge that labor defends
incompetent teachers was the Achilles’ heel of the teacher union
movement, and labor needed a credible answer.
Peer review weeds out bad teachers in a way that enhances,
rather than diminishes, the status of the teaching profession. Peer
review and assistance is common among professors, doctors, and
lawyers, who police themselves, as Shanker argued, and it strengthens the case for teacher involvement in other areas, like textbook
selection and curriculum development.
While some critics liken union involvement in terminating
teachers to the fox guarding the hen house, in practice, teachers
have been even tougher on colleagues than administrators have
been in several jurisdictions. In Cincinnati, which was the second
city in the country to adopt peer review, 10.5 percent of new teachers were found less than satisfactory by teacher reviewers, compared with 4 percent by administrators, and 5 percent were
recommended for dismissal by teachers, compared with 1.6 percent
of those evaluated by principals. The same has been true in other
places.80 In Montgomery County, Maryland, for example, the Wash†
For more on peer assistance and review, see the Fall 2008 issue of American
Educator, available at www.aft.org/ae/fall2008.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
9
ington Post reported in March 2012 that a peer assistance and
review program had “led to the dismissal of 245 teachers and the
resignation of 300” since 2001. In the decade prior to that, when
peer review was not in place, only “a handful were terminated for
poor performance.”81
Unfortunately, peer review has not spread as widely as it
should have.82 In some districts, teachers have expressed concerns
about being evaluated by colleagues, and in other districts, management has not wished to share power over personnel decisions
with teachers. The up-front costs of hiring new teachers to cover
classes while expert consulting teachers provide peer assistance
and conduct reviews can also be substantial. Fortunately, districts
often recoup costs by increasing teacher retention and reducing
costs of dismissal.83 Especially as attacks on tenure increase, local
unions could incorporate this innovative answer to the spurious
charge that unions are chiefly in the business of protecting incompetent members.
separate from more-affluent students, the schools generally face
greater challenges, such as discipline problems, a lack of parental
involvement,87 and inadequate healthcare and nutrition for students, which can hinder the students’ performance on academic
tests. In such an environment, teachers can feel overwhelmed.
Also, the use of value-added measures, under which schools
with low test scores can be closed, and the obsession with testing
in general, add to the pressure on teachers because low-income
students tend to perform less well than their more-affluent peers
on standardized tests used to calculate such measures. As a result,
teachers become frustrated with unfair evaluations of their students and themselves and so tend to leave high-poverty schools
at higher rates.
In recent years, for example, when Charlotte, North Carolina,
schools terminated a racial integration program, researchers
found that teacher quality suffered as once-integrated schools
morphed into high-poverty, mostly minority schools. As Dana
Progressives need to redouble
efforts to address rising school
segregation by race and, especially,
by economic class.
What Can Be Done to Connect Poor Kids
and Great Teachers?
Better teacher improvement policies like peer assistance and review
won’t by themselves solve the genuine problem identified in Vergara: that low-income students, on average, get weaker teachers
than more-advantaged students. Progressives need to redouble
efforts to address the root problem at the heart of why poor kids
often have less-qualified teachers: rising school segregation by race
and, especially, by economic class.
There have always been heroic, excellent teachers in highpoverty schools. But for many teachers, the working conditions
in such schools are intolerable, and the burnout rate is high. University of Pennsylvania’s Ingersoll finds that 45 percent of teacher
turnover takes place in 25 percent of schools—disproportionately
high-poverty schools.84 New data from the U.S. Department of
Education affirm the powerful link between concentrated poverty
and lower teacher quality. In New York state, for example, students in high-poverty schools were 22 times more likely than
those in wealthier schools to have an unlicensed teacher.85 The
Education Trust finds that poor kids are twice as likely “to serve
as training fodder for inexperienced teachers.”86
Why do high-poverty schools have a hard time attracting and
retaining strong teachers? Because they often provide difficult
working conditions. When you pack poor kids into environments
10 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
Goldstein writes, Northwestern University’s C. Kirabo Jackson
found that “schools that became predominantly black suffered a
loss of high-quality teachers as measured by growth in students’
test scores, teachers’ years of experience, and scores on teacher
certification tests.” Goldstein notes that “many effective nonwhite
teachers” left too because they “seem to prefer working in integrated or middle-class settings.”88
So how can policymakers connect poor kids and great teachers? One possibility is to pay great teachers a salary premium to
teach in high-poverty schools. To be effective, the bonus would
have to be quite large, experience and research suggest. Ten years
ago, scholars Eric Hanushek, John Kain, and Steven Rivkin estimated that in order to get nonminority female teachers to stay in
urban schools, school officials would have to offer a salary premium of 25–43 percent for teachers with zero to five years of
experience.89 Likewise, a 2013 study of the federal Talent Transfer
Initiative, which offered a $20,000 bonus to effective elementary
school teachers who agreed to move to low-achieving schools
within the same district and stay two years, found that few teachers were interested. The study of 10 school districts in seven states
found that effective teachers had a positive impact when they
transferred to low-performing schools, but 78 percent didn’t even
fill out an application, despite the fact that the financial reward
offered was far more sizeable than the typical merit aid award of
a few thousand dollars or less. “It’s a hard sell, even with $20,000
on the table,” Steven Glazerman, of Mathematica Policy Research,
which conducted the study, told Education Week.90
The more direct way to connect low-income students and
strong teachers is by creating mixed-income schools. Rather than
a district automatically assigning children to schools that mirror
neighborhood segregation, students should be given an opportunity to choose among a menu of school options, and districts
should honor choices with an eye to promoting economic integration. More than 80 districts, educating 4 million students, employ
such socioeconomic integration policies. In places like Raleigh,
North Carolina, for example, policies promote socioeconomic
school integration largely through magnet school programs that
attract middle-class students to attend schools with urban students. As a result, high-quality National Board Certified Teachers
are spread throughout the district.*
Other effective ways to make high-poverty schools more attractive places to teach include creating community schools that
provide wraparound services to students and families, implementing better mentoring programs for novice teachers, and
establishing universal high-quality preschool programs.†
Rather than gutting hard-won protections for teachers, the next
legal case funded by Silicon Valley millionaires should go after
economic segregation itself. Instead of invoking Brown in a broad
metaphorical sense, why not bring a state-level suit against actual
segregation by class and race? If it is a violation of the California
Constitution to have tenure laws that make it hard to fire bad
teachers in poor and minority communities, why isn’t it a violation when the state and districts draw school boundary lines in a
way that promotes deeply unequal, economically segregated
schools that many strong educators won’t teach in?
In 1996, Connecticut plaintiffs prevailed in a lawsuit, Sheff v.
O’Neill, that challenged de facto economic and racial school segregation. As a result, thousands of poor kids have been given
access to integrated magnet schools in the city of Hartford and to
integrated suburban schools. Careful research comparing students who applied for a lottery to attend the integrated magnet
schools found that those admitted later performed better in math
and reading than those who lost the lottery and attended other
urban schools.91 California needs a similar lawsuit. Such a case
would underline a profound truth: The big problem in education
is not that unions have won too many benefits and supports for
teachers. It’s the disappearance of the American common school,
which once educated rich and poor side by side.
What’s Really Behind the Attacks on Tenure?
Cases like Vergara and Davids are problematic in part because
they elevate a peripheral issue—tenure—which detracts from the
really necessary debates over poverty and segregation. Worse, at
a time when we need to recruit and retain the very best teachers,
the inordinate focus on bad teachers further demoralizes the
education profession. Between 2008 and 2012, a MetLife survey
*For more on the importance of school integration by socioeconomic status, see
“From All Walks of Life” in the Winter 2012–2013 issue of American Educator,
available at www.aft.org/ae/winter2012-2013/kahlenberg.
†
For more on community schools, see the Summer 2009 issue of American Educator,
available at www.aft.org/ae/summer2009. For more on universal preschool, see the
Spring 2010 issue of American Educator, available at www.aft.org/ae/spring2010.
found that teacher job satisfaction “plummeted from 62 to 39
percent, the lowest level in a quarter century,” Dana Goldstein
notes.92 Some pundits think eliminating tenure will elevate the
profession, but by a 3-1 ratio, teachers disagree that they would
have greater prestige if collective bargaining and lifetime tenure
were eliminated.93
So what is really going on? Who benefits from the grossly disproportionate focus on a small number of bad teachers? Going
after teacher tenure serves an important function for ideological
conservatives. It provides a highly effective way to bludgeon one
of the few remaining elements within the largely decimated progressive trade union movement in the United States: teachers
unions. With private sector unionism greatly diminished, union
critic Richard Berman targeted AFT President Weingarten, going
directly to the tenure issue, falsely claiming that she is on a crusade to “protect the jobs of incompetent teachers.”94
That the attack on tenure has gained traction in courts, state
legislatures, and major media outlets is enormously problematic.
Teachers unions are not perfect, but they are one of the few voices
speaking on behalf of disadvantaged kids. As journalist Jonathan
Chait has noted, politicians have a short-term horizon so tend to
underinvest in education. Teachers unions “provide a natural
bulwark” against such tendencies, he writes.95 In places like La
Crosse, Wisconsin; Louisville, Kentucky; and Raleigh, North Carolina, teachers unions have fought for school integration—because
it makes teaching more manageable and because it is better for
students. And, of course, teachers unions are part of the larger
trade union movement fighting for collective bargaining for workers and a higher minimum wage, which together probably constitute the nation’s most important educational improvement
programs, given the well-documented link between the stresses
induced by poverty and lower academic achievement.96
Taking on poverty and segregation—long recognized as the
largest drivers of educational inequality97—is hard work and can
be expensive, so conservatives have focused attention elsewhere.
For years, the right wing has been using the sad reality that poor
and minority kids are stuck in lousy, segregated schools as an
argument for private school vouchers to dismantle public education. Now, in Vergara and Davids, inequality in access to good
teachers is leveraged to promote an anti-union agenda. That this
is done in the name of poor kids and civil rights turns the world
upside down.
☐
Endnotes
1. On Connecticut, New Jersey, and Oregon, see David Finley, “Teacher Tenure: An Innocent
Victim of Vergara v. California,” Education Week, March 4, 2015. On Minnesota, New
Mexico, and Washington, see Caitlin Emma, “Vergara, New Mexico Edition?,” Morning
Education, Politico, April 29, 2015; and Alex Cotoia and Maria Casillas, “Perhaps Lawsuits
Can Help Improve Education in NM,” Albuquerque Journal, April 27, 2015.
2. Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession (New
York: Doubleday, 2014), 214–215. The North Carolina law has been blocked by a judge.
Matthew M. Chingos, “Ending Teacher Tenure Would Have Little Impact on Its Own,” Brown
Center Chalkboard, September 18, 2014, www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/09/18teacher-tenure-chingos.
3. Jennifer Thomsen, “Teacher Performance Plays Growing Role in Employment Decisions,”
Education Commission of the States, May 2014, www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/12/42/11242.
pdf.
4. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 1.
5. Randi Weingarten, “Time Magazine Attacks America’s Teachers,” Diane Ravitch’s blog,
October 23, 2014, www.dianeravitch.net/2014/10/23/time-magazine-attacks-americas-teacherswrite-a-letter-to-time. Cover is from November 3, 2014.
6. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 5.
(Continued on page 43)
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
11
Connecting the Dots
Supporting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder
By Samuel L. Odom and Connie Wong
V
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JON REINFURT
ictor is a junior at Singleton High School in a Midwestern city, and he has autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
In his chemistry class, which he attends with students
who do not have special needs, the lesson for the day
is on endothermic reactions. The teacher has organized the class
into small groups of four to review the lab experiment that they
will do later in the period. Victor, a tall, rangy young man with
Samuel L. Odom directs the Frank Porter Graham Child Development
Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is a
professor in the School of Education. He is also the principal investigator
of the National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum
Disorder and the Center on Secondary Education for Students with Autism
Spectrum Disorder. Previously, he was a member of the National Research
Council’s Committee on Educational Interventions for Children with
Autism. Connie Wong is a research investigator at the Child Development
Institute and serves as the principal investigator of the study Toddlers and
Families Together: Addressing Early Core Features of Autism. This article
is based on their report Evidence-Based Practices for Children, Youth, and
Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (2014).
12
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
sandy blond hair, reads the lab sheet and listens to his classmates,
while rocking slightly in his chair. The teacher has modified Victor’s worksheet to help him follow the lesson. After this review,
the teacher directs the students to move to their lab space and
work with their groups to conduct the experiment.
At the lab space, Sarah, a member of Victor’s group, has been
assigned to work with Victor today. Victor starts the lesson by
reviewing and following the instructions, with Sarah’s occasional
reminders. His rocking increases as they begin the experiment.
Eventually, he leaves the experiment to pace the room, periodically returning to check on the progress and complete some of the
steps of the lesson with Sarah. The teacher and his classmates
know that Victor feels anxious in social situations and has a hard
time concentrating on tasks for a long period of time. His pacing
does not draw a single glance from his peers.
When the lab experiment ends, Victor helps put the equipment
away in the appropriate locations, which are clearly labeled. He
and his classmates return to their small groups and complete the
worksheets for their experiment. Then the bell rings, and they
head to their next class. When asked later about Victor’s work, the
chemistry teacher says he’s a solid B student.
Victor’s mother says that her goal is for her son to attend community college and graduate from a university. Victor says he
wants to be a scientist like his mom.
Rosa is a fourth-grader, also with ASD, who attends Monte
Verde Elementary School in a Southern California city. Her parents emigrated from Mexico before she was born. Rosa has a hard
time using words to communicate with others and is learning to
use a communication program on an iPad. The program enables
her to touch a small picture on the screen to generate a voice that
expresses her thoughts, such as “hello,” “all through,” “how are
you today?” or “I need a break.”
Much of Rosa’s day is spent in a special education class with
five other children, four of whom have ASD. The class is very structured; there are well-labeled areas designated for specific activities (e.g., group academics, independent work, literacy, computer
work). The schedule is posted on the whiteboard, but Rosa also
has her individual schedule with small symbols that represent the
sequence of activities for the day (e.g., a symbol of a small book
indicates literacy time).
During part of the day, Rosa and her teacher work together
focusing on her individual goals; at other times, she participates
in small learning groups or works on independent learning tasks
the teacher has designed. At two points during the day, as well as
during lunch and physical education, Rosa joins a fourth-grade
class down the hall.
While her teacher acknowledges the challenges Rosa faces,
such as living in a bilingual community and being nonverbal, she
takes pride in her successes: Rosa is mostly independent in class,
is starting to have an interest in communicating with others, and
has made gains in her early literacy lessons. Rosa’s parents hope
their daughter eventually will be able to attend middle school with
the children from their neighborhood.
Victor and Rosa, whose names we have changed (as well as the
names of their schools) to protect their privacy, illustrate the
complexities and challenges confronting children and youth with
ASD. In the last 10 years, the prevalence of ASD has increased 200
percent.1 Principals, special education directors, and superintendents across the country report that their schools are teaching
increasing numbers of students with ASD. We have found that
educators want to provide a good and effective educational experience, but they may not be sure where to start or what to do. ASD
is not usually a part of their preservice training, and while laws
such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act dictate that
they must use research-based practices, most resources are difficult to find and confusing to implement.
In this article, we discuss the evidence-based practices (EBPs)
that are solidly supported by the research. We also provide sources
for learning more about how to use EBPs in school, community,
and home settings. And we discuss the types of training that can
lead to their effective use by teachers. But first, we begin with a
short description of ASD.
What Is Autism Spectrum Disorder?
Although several psychiatrists in the early 20th century used the
term “autism” to describe their clients, it was the work of two
psychiatrists in the 1940s that has had the most important contemporary impact on diagnosis. In 1943, Leo Kanner, a child
psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, reported a
unique pattern of social withdrawal, rigidity in behaviors (e.g.,
becoming extremely upset over a tiny change in schedule or environment), and echolalia (repeating words or phrases that others
have just said). Because of its extreme social isolation, he used the
term “autism” (a Greek derivative that means extremely selfaware) to describe the condition. Around the same time (1944),
Hans Asperger, a psychiatrist in Austria, saw a similar pattern of
social difficulties among young men who were his patients and
described the condition as “autism.” “Asperger’s syndrome”
became a term often used to describe, and even diagnose, children with autism who did not also have intellectual disabilities. As
diagnostic classification systems evolved, both “autistic disorder”
and Asperger’s syndrome, in the United States, were combined
into a single classification: autism spectrum disorder.
Educators want to provide a good
and effective experience for students
with ASD, but they may not be sure
where to start or what to do.
ASD is known as a “spectrum” because of a common set of
characteristics—such as onset before age 3, difficulties in social
communication, and restricted and repetitive behaviors—and the
wide range in the way these characteristics are expressed. For
instance, Victor would talk with his teachers and classmates but
often not look them in the eye, and his speech didn’t have the
same cadence as the speech of his teenage classmates. Although
he would talk with his peers, he often preferred to be alone. Rosa,
on the other hand, did not use words to communicate with her
teachers or peers and was learning to use the iPad communication
system. Her teacher tried to stick to a standard schedule because
Rosa found schedule changes very upsetting and confusing.
Both Victor and Rosa have different forms of what scientists
call repetitive or stereotypic behavior: unusual physical movements such as rocking (Victor) or flicking fingers in front of one’s
eyes (Rosa). ASD is also characterized by co-occurring conditions.
Rosa has an intellectual disability, which occurs in 40–60 percent
of individuals with ASD.2 Victor experiences social anxiety that
sometimes leads to “meltdowns” (i.e., nondirected tantrums).
Although ASD occurs most often in boys (more than 75 percent
of the time),3 it also occurs in girls, as in Rosa’s case. Over the last
40 years, the rate of autism diagnoses has increased dramatically:
In the 1970s, it was estimated at 4 in 10,000 people.4 Recently, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that ASD
occurs in 1 in 68 children.5 Scientists think that this increase has
been due to greater public and professional awareness of ASD, as
well as changes in diagnostic criteria and assessment practices.6
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
13
ASD crosses ethnic and racial lines equally, although children
from African American and Latino families tend to be diagnosed
at older ages.7
Shrouded in Myth
Probably more than any other disability, autism has been shrouded
in myth and plagued by misinformation. During the early history
of ASD, scientists attributed the cause to mothers having an emotionally cold relationship with their children. They were called
“refrigerator mothers,” and the treatment entailed removing the
child from the home. Current genetics and neuroscience have
debunked that myth. A second myth, based on fallacious medical
research, was that measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccina-
lished comprehensive, critically reviewed summary of them.
To begin the work of the NPDC, we first conducted a review of
the literature.8 During the first year, NPDC investigators did an
extensive search of research published between 1997 and 2007.
They used professional standards for evaluating methods of published studies,9 identified focused intervention practices that
researchers used, and then grouped those interventions into
categories of evidence-based practices. A total of 24 practices were
identified, and we published a report of this review.10 We then
collaborated with the Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence
to develop online training modules for each of these practices.†
The research on focused intervention practices for children
and youth with ASD does not stand still; in fact, it moves quickly.
Probably more than any
other disability, autism has been
shrouded in myth and plagued
by misinformation.
tions caused autism in some children. That myth has also been
scientifically disproven, but its persistence has led some parents to
refuse vaccinations for their children, which in turn has contributed
to the re-emergence of measles in this country.
Likewise, many proponents of ASD treatments make claims
from cure or recovery to amelioration, but they can point to little
scientific evidence of effectiveness. These interventions appear
in books and on websites that proclaim them as “cutting-edge
therapies” for autism. Sometimes they even mix in programs and
practices that do have research evidence to support their use, thus
lending them an air of legitimacy and further confusing consumers. Educators and family members need to have a reliable source
for finding out about practices that have been shown, through
research, to be effective with children and youth with ASD.
Our Search for Evidence-Based Practices
In 2006, the U.S. Department of Education funded the National
Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorder
(NPDC), with the explicit goal of promoting educators’ use of
evidence-based practices for children and youth with ASD (from
birth to 22 years—that is, from early intervention to the transitionto-community years of schooling).* An immediate dilemma
presented itself. Although researchers had talked and written
about evidence-based practices, there had never been a pub*The center was a collaboration of scientists and professional development experts at
the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison,
and the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine.
14 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
In 2010, we realized that we would have to continually update the
literature review. New research had been published since 2007
that could provide further evidence for practices previously identified. Also, we knew that new research had been completed that
would potentially qualify new practices as evidence-based. In
addition, we thought we could improve on the review methods
we had previously used.
In this second literature review, we included research published
from 1990 to 2011. Our initial broad search yielded more than
29,000 articles. We screened and eliminated many of them, and
reduced the number of articles that met our inclusion criteria (i.e.,
they were based on research that included participants with ASD
who were school-aged and that used experimental methodology)
to around 1,100. Those were further reviewed by a national group
of professionals who had training in research methods and experience with ASD to identify the ones whose methodology met the
standards for high-quality research. From that review, we further
narrowed the literature to 546 articles. Members of our central
research team conducted a systematic content analysis of practices
in these research articles, finding 27 distinct evidence-based practices that met our criteria. We have listed those practices in Table 1
on page 15. (For a full description of our methodology, see the
technical report published online at http://autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu/
node/21.)11
These 27 evidence-based practices are techniques that educators can use to promote the development and learning of children
†
These modules can be accessed at http://autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu.
and youth with ASD; we describe these below and then walk
through a process for appropriate practice selection.
Fundamental Applied Behavior Analysis Techniques
A common mistake in the field is to think of applied behavior
analysis techniques as one practice. In fact, many practices are
based conceptually on applied behavior analysis theory, and they
are considered among the most effective approaches for children
and youth with ASD. We identified five practices that we call “fundamental” because they reflect the basic principles of applied
behavior analysis. Fundamental applied behavior analysis practices (italicized below as we unpack them) can be used by teachers, speech pathologists, school psychologists, paraprofessionals,
and family members as individual interventions or as part of
multicomponent EPB strategies. In other words, they are the
building blocks for some of the other intervention approaches.
Reinforcement is a technique in which educators apply a consequence, such as descriptive praise, a grade, or an item (e.g., a
sticker), after a child engages in a desired behavior, in order to
increase the reoccurrence of the behavior in the future. The educator may assist the child in engaging in the behavior by providing
a prompt (e.g., an instruction, a gesture, a helping hand).
A particular problem for some children with ASD is that they
become dependent on prompts from adults to engage in a learned
skill. A strategy for “weaning” students from this support is called
time delay. For example, the educator might set up the occasion
for Rosa to ask for materials using her iPad by putting out all the
materials for an art activity except the scissors. The educator
would wait for a brief time with an expectant look on her face (e.g.,
5–10 seconds) to allow Rosa to ask for the scissors on her own. The
educator would prompt Rosa if she does not ask for the scissors
during the time delay.
Educators may show a student how to engage in a behavior or
action by modeling that behavior (e.g., a teacher shows a student
how to put away materials used in an activity in their labeled locations). Another basic behavior strategy called task analysis
involves breaking down complicated behaviors or tasks into
smaller parts. For example, a teacher might identify the six steps
needed for Victor to make the transition from his last class of the
day to the bus he will be taking home. The teacher would then
specifically teach Victor each step so he can reach his goal of
independent transitioning from school to home. As noted, these
fundamental behavioral techniques are often used in combination with other techniques in the evidence-based practices we
describe next.
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports
The practices we discuss in this article are designed to teach students a skill in which they need to be proficient (e.g., interacting
socially with peers). However, students with ASD may engage in
behaviors that are undesirable and distract from learning, which
we will call problem behaviors. These behaviors may be repetitive
in nature, such as rocking or unusual hand or motor movements,
tantrums or “meltdowns,” or repetitive vocalizations. A general
strategy for addressing these behaviors is called Positive Behavioral
Interventions and Supports (PBIS), and many schools have adopted
it schoolwide to address problem behaviors for all students. In our
review of the ASD intervention literature, we identified many of the
Table 1. Current Evidence-Based Practices,
Grouped Conceptually
Fundamental Applied Behavior Analysis Techniques
• Reinforcement
• Prompting
• Time Delay
• Modeling
• Task Analysis
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports
• Functional Behavior Assessment
• Antecedent-Based Intervention
• Extinction
• Response Interruption/Redirection
• Differential Reinforcement of Alternative, Incompatible,
or Other Behavior
• Functional Communication Training
Social-Communication Interventions
• Social Skills Training
• Peer-Mediated Instruction and Intervention
• Social Narratives
• Structured Play Group
• Picture Exchange Communication System
Teaching Strategies
• Visual Supports
• Discrete Trial Teaching
• Naturalistic Intervention
• Parent-Implemented Intervention
• Pivotal Response Training
• Scripting
• Exercise
Cognitive Behavioral Interventions
• Self-Management
• Cognitive Behavioral Intervention
Technologically Oriented Interventions
• Technology-Aided Instruction and Intervention
• Video Modeling
individual interventions that make up the system of PBIS.
When a problem behavior occurs, an initial approach is to try
to determine the cause of the behavior through a functional
behavior assessment. By observing and recording what happens
immediately before and after a problem behavior occurs, educators may be able to determine the cause. In some cases, a situation may trigger a behavior, like too much noise in a certain part
of the classroom. The teacher may use an antecedent-based
intervention in which he or she removes the trigger, in this case
moving the student to a quieter part of the classroom. In other
cases, the teacher may determine that when he or she attends
to the student (e.g., by saying “stop that”) after each problem
behavior, the attention actually appears to motivate the student
to continue the behavior. In such cases, the teacher might use a
practice called extinction, in which he or she ceases to give the
student the desired attention by ignoring the behavior.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
15
Sometimes a problem behavior will escalate from small, less
intense occurrences (e.g., mild rocking) to a full-blown tantrum.
An educator may see these early signs and use response interruption/redirection. For example, participating in a small-group
activity increased Victor’s social anxiety, which first would manifest as rocking behavior but then would escalate to a meltdown if
unaddressed. When the early stages of this “behavioral chain”
began, the teacher would ask Victor to engage in a solitary activity
(e.g., completing a worksheet) so he could settle down and return
to the small-group activity.
Another strategy is to promote an appropriate behavior that
would take the place of or be incompatible with the problem
behavior. Using this differential reinforcement, the teacher provides positive reinforcements to a student for using a pencil to
complete a class assignment instead of engaging in the tic of
“finger flipping” with the pencil. When the problem behavior
appears to result from frustration in not being able to communicate, an educator may use functional communication training.
the situation and perhaps how the student should act in the situation. For Victor, his teacher writes a narrative describing the
appropriate way of joining a group of peers having lunch in the
cafeteria. Victor would read the story before going to lunch, and
the teacher would review the story with him; later that day, the
teacher would discuss with Victor what happened at lunchtime.
For children with ASD, structured play groups can be arranged by
the teacher in ways that support the social and play interactions
of the student with ASD and the student’s peers.
One of the most frequently used interventions to promote communication skills for nonverbal students with ASD is the Picture
Exchange Communication System. This system begins with having
students exchange pictures for desired objects and then prompting
them, once they are ready, to engage in verbal communication.
Teaching Strategies
Seven types of interventions focus on teaching a wide range of
skills. Because many children and youth with ASD understand
Educators and family members need
a reliable source for practices that
have been shown, through research,
to be effective with children and
youth with ASD.
With this approach, the educator teaches communication skills
to take the place of a problem behavior (e.g., a student is taught
to use words to ask for a food item at snack time rather than crying
and pointing at the food).
Social-Communication Interventions
A core feature of ASD is difficulty with social communication skills,
the focus of several evidence-based practices. In one strategy, social
skills are taught directly through social skills training, usually delivered in small-group settings based on a specific curriculum or
therapy. A strategy that educators use in many schools is peermediated instruction and intervention, which may include teaching
a peer to provide tutoring or support for a student with ASD (e.g.,
Sarah helping Victor in chemistry class). Such a strategy may also
consist of establishing a peer social network that helps students
with ASD engage in social interactions and relationships.
Another approach is social narratives,* in which a teacher or
student writes a brief story about a social situation that explains
*Carol Gray first popularized the Social Stories technique in 1991. Students receive
explanations about how to act in everyday situations that children with autism may find
confusing. For more about her work, see www.carolgraysocialstories.com/social-stories.
16 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
visual presentations of information, teachers frequently employ
visual supports. These can include a schedule that highlights the
order of the day’s activities in graphic symbols (like Rosa used),
symbols posted in the class that provide cues for which activities
should occur in which areas, and/or highlighted parts of a class
activity that cue a response (e.g., a visual indicator that prompts
students to write their names on class assignments).
Another teaching strategy is discrete trial teaching, which usually involves a teacher working one-to-one with a student with
ASD. In this approach, the teacher provides prompts when necessary, reinforces correct responses, and corrects errors if they
occur. Discrete trial teaching requires that the teacher provide
many opportunities for the child to respond in the learning activities, which is sometimes called “massed trials.”
In contrast are naturalistic interventions, where the educator
identifies activities and routines during a school day that give a
child the opportunity to practice a skill. The teacher sets up the
student’s schedule and activities to provide the learning opportunity, and then offers support through prompting or reinforcement. For example, for Rosa, the teacher identifies a minimum of
five times during the day that Rosa would use her iPad to com-
municate with peers or adults in the class. The teacher ensures behavioral approaches. Although conceptually similar to one
each opportunity is provided, offers a prompt (or time-delay another, the procedures are different, and educators and theraprompt) if Rosa does not use the iPad independently, and then pists have used them to address different goals. Self-management
strategies teach students to recognize when they are engaging in
ensures an appropriate response.
Some interventions are parent implemented. Educators teach the correct or desired behavior (e.g., a goal specified in the stuparents to use intervention techniques with their children in the dent’s individual education plan), and also enable them to monihome or community. This intervention may include some of the tor or record the behavior and/or reward themselves when
other evidence-based practices described in this article. For performing a specific criterion correctly.
Cognitive behavioral interventions focus on the student learnexample, parents may use naturalistic interventions to teach a
social or play skill or a form of discrete trial teaching to teach a ing to be aware of his own thoughts and emotions, to recognize
negative thoughts or emotions, and to use strategies for changing
language concept.
Pivotal response training is a teaching strategy that uses both his thinking and behavior.
behavioral and naturalistic strategies. In this approach, the educator builds on student initiative and interests by providing choices, Technologically Oriented Interventions
reinforcing attempts, practicing previously learned skills, and As the world has become a more technological place, a large variproviding directly related consequences for correct responses. ety of interventions for students with ASD now rely on technolFor example, if an educator is teaching the student to use words ogy.12 A general evidence-based practice called technology-aided
when making a request, the natural consequence would be for instruction and intervention employs technology as its central
the student to receive what she is requesting rather than the supporting feature. The range of these interventions is broad and
teacher’s praise or an unrelated reward such as a sticker. For includes computer-assisted instruction, speech-generating
instance, if the student asks for crayons, she would get crayons devices, smartphones, and tablets, to name a few.
and not simply hear her teacher say, “Nice job using your words.”
With video modeling, students watch a video demonstration
To help a child learn to participate in specific situations, educa- (perhaps on an iPad or smartphone) of the correct way to perform
tors have used a technique called scripting, in which they prepare a a skill or behavior immediately before they will be in a situation
written description of the situation and behavioral expectations, and where they should use that skill. The person modeling the behavuse the script to help the child practice repeatedly before engaging ior in the video may be the student or another person.
in the actual situation. This practice is different from social narratives
in that the child is taught specifically what to say in a special situa- Selecting and Using Evidence-Based
tion, and then he or she practices the response. In social narratives, Practices in Schools
the story the child reads (or sees through symbols) describes the Identification of evidence-based practices is only a part of the
social situation and may serve as a reminder of the way he or she process of designing effective programs for students with ASD. In
should act in the situation.
Another evidence-based practice that emerged in our latest
Figure 1. Program Quality for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder
review was exercise. Facilitating a
student’s engagement in physical
Interdisciplinary
activities can promote appropriate
Teaming
behavior or reduce problem behaviors. For example, a student with
ASD may grow more inattentive and
Program Ecology
engage in more problem behavior
(e.g., finger flicking and rocking) as
Learning Environment
the school day progresses, to the
Structure & Schedule
point that it interferes with his or her
participating in the literacy activities
Positive Learning Climate
in his or her special education class.
Curriculum & Instruction
Program
Learner
By planning an exercise period with
Communication
Quality
Outcomes
aerobic physical activity before the
Social Competence
literacy activity, the educator may
Personal Independence
help improve the student’s attention
Functional Behavior
and decrease the problem behavior—outcomes reported in the
Assessment & IEP
research studies.
Transition
(middle and high school only)
Cognitive Behavioral
Interventions
Two focused interventions employ
a combination of cognitive and
Family
Participation
SOURCE: APERS DEVELOPMENT GROUP, AUTISM PROGRAM ENVIRONMENT RATING SCALE
(PRESCHOOL/ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE/HIGH SCHOOL) (CHAPEL HILL, NC: NATIONAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CENTER ON ASD, 2011).
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
17
18 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
Communication
Behavior
Joint
Attention
6–14
0–5
15–22
6–14
0–5
15–22
6–14
0–5
15–22
6–14
0–5
SOURCE: ODOM ET AL., EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES FOR CHILDREN, YOUTH, AND YOUNG ADULTS WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER, 23.
Visual Supports
Video Modeling
Time Delay
Technology-Aided Instruction and Intervention
Task Analysis
Structured Play Group
Social Skills Training
Social Narratives
Self-Management
Scripting
Response Interruption/Redirection
Reinforcement
Prompting
Pivotal Response Training
Picture Exchange Communication System
Peer-Mediated Instruction and Intervention
Parent-Implemented Intervention
Naturalistic Intervention
Modeling
Functional Communication Training
Functional Behavior Assessment
Extinction
Exercise
Discrete Trial Teaching
Differential Reinforcement of Alternative,
Incompatible, or Other Behavior
Cognitive Behavioral Intervention
Antecedent-Based Intervention
Evidence-Based Practices
Social
Play
Cognitive
School
Readiness
A “filled-in” cell indicates that at least one study documented the efficacy of that practice for the age group identified on that outcome.
Table 2. Matrix of Evidence-Based Practices by Outcome and Age in Years
Academic
Motor
Adaptive
Vocational
Mental
Health
15–22
6–14
15–22
0–5
6–14
0–5
15–22
6–14
0–5
15–22
6–14
0–5
15–22
6–14
15–22
0–5
6–14
0–5
15–22
6–14
0–5
15–22
6–14
15–22
0–5
our work, we have suggested a plan for building such a program
that incorporates assessing program quality, goal development,
selection of specific practices, support for implementation, and
ongoing evaluation of outcomes.13
Building on Quality
When our research team works with schools to implement evidence-based practices for students with ASD, we begin by discussing program quality. By program quality, we mean the
features of a school that appear in Figure 1 (on page 17). A highquality program has coordination among school interdisciplinary
team members, family involvement, and a range of other features,
such as clear organization of schedules and class environments,
a positive social climate, and instructional guidelines. Trying to
implement EBPs that focus on a student’s goals in a school that is
unable to fully support students with special needs is, in the worst
cases, like the proverbial “rearranging the deck chairs on the
Titanic.” Even when implemented well, the practices are not going
to achieve the desired effects for the student because the foundation is not there.
We have developed an instrument to assess the quality of
school programs called the Autism Program Environment Rating
Scale (APERS), which includes assessment of all the features of
quality appearing in Figure 1. When working with schools, we
complete an APERS review, share it with school staff, and note the
areas of strength and the areas for improvement. The school staff
members then develop a work plan for addressing the areas for
improvement.
For example, in Victor’s school, there were many areas of
strength, but the staff members were not working closely as a
professional team, had poorly written transition plans, and could
have done a better job at involving families. The team members
in the school (several special education teachers and general
education teachers, the speech therapist, and the transition coordinator) identified these as areas for school improvement and
worked on each during the year.
Setting Goals
Observable and measurable goals for students with ASD are a
critical “end” on which teachers must focus. Being clear about the
skill or behavior we want the student to learn is essential. In our
work with schools, we spend a lot of time with teachers to develop
students’ goals.*
Selecting Evidence-Based Practices
A teacher may look at the list of EBPs in Table 1 (on page 15) and
say, “There are 27 practices here. Do I have to use every one of
them? If not, how do I pick the right one to use for a particular
student?” One of the originators of evidence-based medicine,
Dr. David Sackett, noted that evidence-based practice is not a
cookbook.14 Selection of practices depends on the identification
of the scientifically validated practices and the professional
judgment of the practitioner.
In our work with educators, we use a matrix (Table 2 on page
18) that identifies the common outcomes generated by each prac*We also use a system called Goal Attainment Scaling to rate students’ progress on
their goals. For more information, see http://autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu/node/26.
tice, sorted by age. We ask the teacher to first determine the general outcome area of a goal and then find the practices that have
generated positive outcomes in those areas.
For Victor, one goal (broadly stated) was talking with classmates at lunchtime. Given this goal, his teacher would look at the
matrix, which has outcomes on the top row and EBPs in the left
column. Toward the top of the matrix is a row that indicates at
which age range(s) the practice has been determined to be effective. Victor’s goal is social, and he is in high school (the 15–22 age
group). The matrix reveals nine EBPs that have produced positive
outcomes for participants who were Victor’s age. The teacher
would then review the practices and use her professional judgment about which one(s) might work best for Victor. For example,
she might decide on a peer-mediated intervention and a social
narrative intervention, which we described earlier. The high
Evidence-based practice is not
a cookbook. Selection depends
on identification and professional
judgment.
school already has a peer-buddy program, so she arranges for the
peers in the program to spend time with Victor during lunch. Also,
as noted previously, the teacher creates a social narrative that
Victor reads immediately beforehand.
Finding the Procedural Details about EBPs
Many educators do not have time to sift through research journals
to learn the details of EBPs they can use with their students. To that
end, our group, in collaboration with the Ohio Center for Autism
and Low Incidence, has developed online modules for all of the 24
practices found in the first literature review mentioned previously.
Also, we have created briefs that contain the content from the online
modules in PDF format. The modules and briefs are available for
free on our website (http://autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu). Each module
and brief contains a description of an EBP, data collection forms,
the specific articles that contain the scientific evidence of the practice, video examples (for some but not all), and a fidelity checklist
(important in evaluating accurate use of the practice). We are currently revising the modules to include the information from the
most recent review15 and are revising the current practices based
on the latest research.
Selected EBP interventions may not work for every student.
The autism spectrum is broad, and the individual characteristics
and needs of students with ASD are diverse. EBPs are an important starting place for educators. However, after selecting an EBP
to use with an individual student, it is critical that the educator
(Continued on page 44)
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
19
Escaping the Shadow
A Nation at Risk and Its Far-Reaching Influence
By Jal Mehta
ILLUSTRATIONS BY WILLIAM DUKE
I
n 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education
released its now famous report, A Nation at Risk, which
warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity” in American schooling. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education but
largely written by a group of prominent academics, A Nation at
Risk invoked a crisis so far-reaching in its impact that it still governs the way we think about public education 30 years later. Many
of our current policies, and the assumptions that underlie those
policies, are attributable in significant part to the way in which the
report framed the debate. If the next generation of educators are
to forge their own path, they will need to get out from under the
long shadow of A Nation at Risk.
Jal Mehta is an associate professor of education at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education, where his research focuses on the professionalization
of teaching. This article is adapted from his book The Allure of Order:
High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake
American Schooling (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
20 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
The report, published years before many young teachers today
were even born, was groundbreaking in emphasizing the importance of education to economic competitiveness and the failings
of American schooling in comparison with international competitors. It presented a utilitarian and instrumental vision of
education, and argued that schools, not society, should be held
accountable for higher performance, and that performance
should be measured by external testing—assumptions that
underlay the state standards movement in the 1980s and 1990s
and persist today in federal policy through No Child Left Behind.
A Nation at Risk has not been ignored in previous accounts of
American educational history: it is often cited as a critical document.1 In this article, I examine, in more detail than previous work,
the creation, rhetoric, and reception of the report, as well as its
profound effect.
Of all the reports and commissions on education, why did A
Nation at Risk have such a seismic impact? Why did the authors
define the educational problem as they did? Why did their definition resonate so widely? Why were critics unable to dislodge the
dominant narrative? Why has the report had such staying power
in framing the debate? And how might those who disagree with
its framing escape its long reach?
Establishing a New Story Line
There was no indication in 1982 that the next two decades would
witness an explosion of reform strategies aimed at increasing
performance in schooling. A serious economic recession, severe
state budget deficits, and President Ronald Reagan’s stated intention to downgrade the federal role in education policy all pointed
to education remaining a low priority.
In their 1982 textbook on the politics of education, longtime
education policy analysts Frederick Wirt and Michael Kirst pointed
to tax revolts, slow national economic growth, the shrinking share
of the population with students in the schools, and a decreasing
federal role, as factors that likely precluded significant education
reform, concluding that “the 1980s will be a decade of consolidating
and digesting the large number of innovations from the 1970s.”2
It was into these seemingly calm waters that A Nation at Risk
dropped in April 1983. In a short report that employed bold and
ominous language, the National Commission on Excellence in
Education assailed the nation’s poor performance, famously
declaring that the United States was caught in “a rising tide of mediocrity” that imperiled the nation’s economic future. In support of
its case, it cited a variety of academic indicators, most notably high
levels of illiteracy, poor performance on international comparisons,
and a steady decline in SAT scores from 1963 to 1980.
Quoting analyst Paul Copperman, the report claimed that this
would be the first time in the history of the country that the educational skills of one generation would not be equal to those of
their parents. Contrasting this declining educational picture with
the centrality of skills and human capital in the knowledge-based,
postindustrial economy, the report linked the future of the
nation’s international economic competitiveness with the reform
of its educational system.
The report’s recommendations called for a new focus on
“excellence” for all, which would be achieved through a revamped
high school curriculum with fewer electives and more required
courses in math, English, science, and social studies, a combination that the authors called “the New Basics.” They also called for
a longer school day and school year, more homework, tighter
university admission standards, more testing for students as indicators of proficiency, higher standards for becoming a teacher, an
11-month professional year, and market-sensitive and performance-based teacher pay.
The reaction to the report was instantaneous and overwhelming.* The report was released in a White House ceremony that
Reagan, disregarding the report’s findings, used as an occasion to
highlight his familiar agenda of school prayer, tuition tax credits,
and the end of the “federal intrusion” into education. But the media
coverage of the ceremony focused on the claims about the “rising
tide of mediocrity,” pushing Reagan’s agenda to the background.3
The U.S. Government Printing Office received more than 400
requests for copies in a single hour the following day and distrib*Albert Shanker, president of the AFT at the time of the report’s release, embraced it.
For more on his position, see Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over
Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy by Richard D. Kahlenberg.
uted more than 6 million copies over the course of the next year.
The press interest was insatiable; the Washington Post published
almost two articles per week on A Nation at Risk in the year following the report’s release.4 An assessment in 1984 found that
more than 250 state task forces—in only 50 states!—had been put
together to study education and recommend changes.5
Some critics have charged that the commission “manufactured
a crisis” as part of a broader neoconservative agenda for school
reform.6 But a careful look at the composition of the commission
and the internal records of its deliberations shows that this view
does not hold up. At the time the commission was formed, the
agenda of the Reagan administration was the abolition of the
Department of Education, not an expanded federal bully pulpit
demanding educational excellence. The commission was initially
formed by Department of Education Secretary Terrel Bell, whose
primary assignment from Reagan was to find a way to eliminate
A Nation at Risk invoked a crisis so
far-reaching in its impact that it still
governs the way we think about
public education 30 years later.
his own department. He devised the idea of a national commission to report on the quality of American education and make
suggestions for improvement as a way of increasing national
attention to the important functions of public education. Finding
little support from Reagan’s office for the appointment of a presidential commission amid criticisms that it might generate a
greater federal role for education, in July 1981 Bell appointed a
commission himself.7
Notwithstanding the political motives behind the formation
of the commission, its composition does not support the idea that
the analysis was motivated by larger ideological, partisan, or corporate concerns. It was chaired by University of Utah President
David P. Gardner and was composed of university faculty and
administrators (seven members) and state and local school personnel, including principals, teachers, school board members,
and superintendents (seven members), with only one business
leader, one politician, and two others.8
It included some very distinguished educators who presumably would not be easily swayed by political concerns, including
Gardner, Nobel Chemistry Prize–winner Glenn Seaborg, Harvard
physics professor Gerald Holton, and Yale President A. Bartlett
Giamatti. Reagan did initially try to set a direction for the commission; one member reported that in an early meeting Reagan
suggested that it focus on five fundamental points: “Bring God
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
21
back into the classroom. Encourage tuition tax credits for families
using private schools. Support vouchers. Leave the primary
responsibility for education to parents. And please abolish that
abomination, the Department of Education. Or, at least, don’t ask
to waste more federal money on education—‘we have put in more
only to wind up with less.’ ”9
But the commission members did not share the president’s
interests and, ironically, elevated the priority of educational
reform so that the abolition of the Department of Education (created in 1979) subsequently became impossible. The commission
engaged in 18 months of fact-finding, commissioning dozens of
papers and holding six public meetings, as well as a number of
regional meetings with a variety of stakeholders, before producing
its analysis. (For an inside look at the commission’s work, see the
sidebar on page 24.) There is no reason to think that its report did
not represent the commission’s honest appraisal of the state of
the school system and what needed to be improved. The fact that
Educators resented the report’s
implication that economic problems
should be laid at their feet.
Reagan’s office largely disregarded the findings of the report in
drafting his remarks for the White House ceremony indicates that
the administration had not gotten the report it wanted.10
Internal drafts do show that the report’s inflammatory rhetoric
about a system in crisis was a conscious choice made by some on
the commission in order to increase its impact. An outline of the
final report that was approved in September 1982 reveals a version
that would have been much longer and more complimentary,
including four chapters of text, beginning with a “relatively brief,
positive description of the size and scope of American education”
and leaving an outline of major problems to the final section.11
Staff offered drafts of sections of the report in December 1982,
which some members of the commission regarded, as one put it,
as “not emphatic enough to measure the gravity of the need.”
In January 1983, Seaborg wrote an outline that more closely
resembled the final document. He wrote: “1. Clarion call, call to
arms, concise, include 4, 5 or 6 top recommendations. Total of 10
pages (no more than 15 pages). 2. Strident opening sentence or
two. (1) If foreign country did this to us we would declare war. (2)
‘We have identified the enemy and it is us.’ ”
This theme was picked up by Holton, who voiced his displeasure
with the “involuted and complex” versions written by the commission’s staff and wrote a February 14 draft that contained much of
the heated rhetoric that would serve as the groundwork for the final
22 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
version.12 In the end, the good the report offered about American
education—high college-going rates compared with international
competitors and high scores for top American students on international comparisons of achievement—was buried near the end, a
minor qualification to a dominant rhetoric of crisis.
The New Story Line Triumphs
Not everyone agreed with the claims of A Nation at Risk, and its
over-the-top rhetoric was a source of much criticism among professional researchers and academics, who argued that the panel’s
desire to capture attention for its report had led it to suspend the
usual standards of scientific scrutiny in order to make its provocative claims. As Harold Howe II, a former U.S. commissioner of
education, said in the week following the report: “I think American education has a cold. Most people think it has the flu. It certainly doesn’t have the pneumonia the committee suggested.”13
Specifically, these critics noted that the international comparisons were unfair because other countries were more selective about
which students took the tests; that measuring a decline in SATs
neglected to consider the increase of students, particularly poor
and minority students, taking the test; that SAT scores had actually
increased since 1980; and that basic skills, particularly among poor
and minority students, had been on the rise throughout the 1970s.14
Educators resented the implication that economic problems
should be laid at their feet; critics have subsequently questioned
the connection between national educational and economic performance, especially as the American economy rose in the 1990s
and the Japanese economy faltered. A New York Times article in
September 1983 reported some of the early discontent in a story
headlined “ ‘Tide of Mediocrity’ May Not Be Rising as Fast as It
Seems,” which quoted Ernest Boyer, at the time president of the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, acerbically
noting that “what we have is a rising tide of school reports.”15
These academic qualifications, even when they were reported
in the media, had little impact on the dominant story line in the
mind of the public or policy elites. Public confidence in schooling,
which had already been falling as part of the post-Watergate
decline of confidence in public institutions, hit a new low after the
release of the report in 1983.16 States rushed to issue their own
reports to evaluate whether they were falling short of the new
measures of excellence specified by A Nation at Risk. Despite the
claims of the critics, A Nation at Risk had been the rare report that
galvanized not only debate but also action.
Why did A Nation at Risk succeed where so many previous
high-level reports, including one by the College Board in 1977 that
reported the same decline in SAT scores, were unable to rouse
more than a moment’s notice?17 Part of it was undoubtedly attributable to the prominence of the report’s authors. The fact that it
was commissioned by the Department of Education gave it
needed weight and authority and assured initial media attention.
The conflict between the substance of the report and Reagan’s
school agenda, particularly over the issue of federal responsibility
for schooling, was of early interest to the media.
The timing of the report was also important, as it was released
in the midst of a recession and offered a seemingly compelling
explanation of the relative success of leading international competitors like Japan and South Korea. The analysis was bolstered by a
series of other reports, released shortly thereafter, that also raised
concerns about the quality of schooling and emphasized the growing importance of education to state and national economic competitiveness.18 The findings themselves, particularly on the decline
of SAT scores, the levels of illiteracy, and poor international performance, were also striking and widely publicized, even if they could
partially be explained by the report’s detractors.
In addition to the substance of its findings, the report also
gained influence by telling a powerful story of decline that resonated with policymakers and the public. More than simply a
jumble of numbers, the report contained an identifiable narrative
arc that made it both memorable and resonant. This arc was what
Robert Putnam, referring to his own work on the decline of social
capital in America, calls a “declensionist narrative,” or, more simply, a story of decline and fall.19
For an audience of adults who no longer had firsthand knowledge of the schools, this narrative, supported by the glaring indicator of dropping SAT scores, proved irresistible. Critics of the
report never were able to offer an equally convincing counternarrative that would tie together their assorted criticisms into a compelling story.20
To be sure, individuals have always seen schooling as a key
route to economic mobility, and political leaders have always
stressed the relationship of education to our broader economic
prosperity. In this sense, A Nation at Risk did not provide a new
analysis. But the political debate around education does shift from
one educational purpose to another—sometimes emphasizing
the equity purposes of schooling, sometimes its role as a shaper
of social citizenship—and A Nation at Risk (like Sputnik before it)
did play an important role in concentrating attention on the economic functions of schooling. By linking an old set of concerns
about education’s economic role to a new analysis of international
economic competition and the shift to a postindustrial economy,
A Nation at Risk succeeded in elevating the economic purpose of
schooling over its other purposes.
The Economic View of Schooling
Perhaps the most fundamental shift in thinking that A Nation at
Risk encapsulates is the elevation of the economic purposes of
schooling over its many other purposes. Schooling has traditionally been accorded a wide variety of functions—to create citizens
and social cohesion; to promote patriotic values; to incorporate
immigrants; to stimulate student growth, creativity, and critical
thinking; to provide an avenue for upward mobility—only some
of which are consistent with the human capital approach.
What propelled this elevation? Three separate consequences
of the changing economy were likely relevant. Most often noted
has been the greater role of education in international economic
competition. This is an issue that A Nation at Risk placed squarely
on the map, and it has not receded since. In hindsight, A Nation
at Risk overstated the case—other factors affect productivity, and,
before the most recent recession, the American economy had
since overtaken many of its rivals, despite little improvement on
international school comparisons.21
But the link between educational success and national competitiveness caught the popular imagination and continues to be
a widely used prism in op-ed columns and political speeches.22
Less noticed but more important in spurring state policy adoption
was the idea that improving education was key to state economic
growth. While international productivity comparisons are influenced by a variety of factors that differ across countries (e.g.,
infrastructure, regulatory climate, proximity to supply chains),
the differences across states in these factors are less significant,
making the quality of the labor force more critical. A group of
southern governors had already begun reform efforts to improve
education under this banner, and A Nation at Risk nationalized
these state concerns.23
Finally, A Nation at Risk highlighted the increasing individual
returns to education, which were of widespread concern to parents
and students everywhere. In the years since, politicians have
largely blurred these various economic advantages to greater
educational performance, linking individual, state, and national
prosperity to the bandwagon of school reform.
This elevation has restructured the terms of rhetorical debate
and the political landscape of schooling. By raising the agenda
status of education, the economic emphasis brought in a much
wider array of actors, most notably state (and eventually federal)
legislators and business groups. An analysis that I conducted of
governors’ State of the State addresses in three states—Maryland,
Michigan, and Utah—found that the topic of education was four
times more prevalent in addresses given in the decades since A
Nation at Risk in comparison with the previous decade. Reading
these addresses suggests that the reason for this increase is that
as education became more directly linked to economic issues, it
became a more central part of political rhetoric.
The idea of investing in human capital was attractive to Democrats, since it provided a way to pitch their traditional concerns
about greater resources for schools in the hard language of economic investment.24 At the same time, the economic view of
schooling proved appealing to Republican legislators eager to
please business constituencies, and the market and businessderived reform strategies that followed enabled Republicans to
erode the traditional Democratic advantage on education.25
For both parties, what the economic imperatives meant in
educational terms—greater literacy, improved skills in math and
reading, more advanced critical-thinking skills—was so fundamental as to be uncontroversial, drawing wide and deep support
from the general public. In the past, the parties had largely split
over the issues of busing, school finance, and greater federal inter-
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
23
A Closer Look at the Commission’s Work
BY TOMMY TOMLINSON
Having concluded that public education was
getting short shrift, President Reagan’s first
secretary of education, Terrel Bell, determined that the country needed a close
examination of education quality and a
better definition of its status. To that end,
he created the National Commission on
Excellence in Education. He appointed David
Gardner, president of the University of Utah,
to be chairman and chose Milton Goldberg,
acting director of the National Institute of
Education (NIE), to be the executive director.
To avoid later charges of partisanship,
Bell gave both men free reign to identify
and select members. They chose 17
commissioners representing diverse
interests and backgrounds, including
university presidents, leading academics, a
Nobel laureate, public school administrators, the current high school teacher of the
year (coincidentally, a member of the
American Federation of Teachers), and state
and community leaders.
Goldberg picked his staff from among
the NIE workforce. Thirteen staff members
were appointed to serve the commission—
seven administrative/clerical support and six
professional staff. Another 21 NIE staff
members supplemented the core group to
add their expertise on specific issues. In my
case, I was a senior associate at NIE. As soon
as I heard that Secretary Bell had created
the commission, I called Goldberg and
declared my interest in being a member of
the staff. He asked me to be the director of
research. In that role, I commissioned
research reviews on a range of education
issues, including curriculum, learning,
motivation, and American educational
history, among others.
The commission’s scope was initially
confined to the variables that were
plausibly within control of schools, colleges,
and universities. These initially included
time on task, structure and content of the
curriculum, and expectations or standards
of learning. The commissioners quickly
determined that teacher quality and
administrative leadership, including
political and fiscal support, were also critical
determinants of excellence, and they were
added. Issues such as income, race, and
parental background were purposely
excluded.
Tommy Tomlinson was the director of research for the
National Commission on Excellence in Education and a
senior associate at the National Institute of Education.
As a first step, Goldberg drew up a series
of symposia, panel discussions, and hearings
to be held around the country on a variety
of topics bearing on the quality and
structure of American education; transcripts
of the proceedings were provided to all
commission members so they could increase
their knowledge about the issues in primary
and secondary education. Such presentations, coordinated by commission staffer
Susan Traiman, also provided publicity for
the commission’s work and helped establish
an audience in advance of A Nation at Risk’s
April 1983 release.
aimed at the usual audience of academics
and educators would not do. He was right
in his concern, but the commission staff
members were completely caught off guard
by Holton’s rhetoric and, like proper social
scientists, were frankly not sure it was an
acceptable approach.
As it turned out, Holton’s preamble was
precisely what Seaborg had in mind. We had
conceived a report along more or less
conventional lines, one that summarized the
import of the issue, the charge from the
secretary of education, the sense of the
research, and the substance of the symposia.
We had conceived a report along more or
less conventional lines. But the addition of
Holton’s preamble set a much different tone.
Leading scholars and other authorities in
the field were chosen by commission staff
to participate in these presentations and to
prepare reports on selected topics. Thirtyone papers were commissioned, and
together with the evidence from the
symposia, hearings, and panel discussions,
they composed the substantive background
of the final report. The results of this effort
were then circulated among the
commissioners.
The next step was pulling all these pieces
together and writing the report. The first
draft was prepared by the principal staff
writer, Jim Harvey, based on a combination
of the commissioners’ conclusions and
recommendations, some final thoughts by
the chair, David Gardner, and other salient
findings. Shortly after the draft was sent to
the commissioners, Commissioner Gerald
Holton responded with the now famous
preamble titled “A Nation at Risk.” The
staff received Holton’s text by mail one
morning, handwritten on the yellow pages
of a lined tablet, just as he had written it on
a plane to the West Coast. It was a pageturner unlike any we could have imagined.
It was completely unanticipated, despite
prior suggestions from Commissioner Glenn
Seaborg that the report had to be a call to
arms and feature the federal eagle on its
cover. Seaborg contended that a report
written in the standard academic style
24 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
It would be organized around the variables
of content, expectations, time, teaching
quality, and leadership. It would end with
the commission’s recommendations for
change. But the addition of Holton’s
preamble set a much different tone.
Our charge was clear: we had to
integrate the preamble with the substantive body of the text. While staff members
did not write the famous introductory
declaration, they did conceive and write the
main text that described the principal
conclusions, established the prime variables,
and, with the advice and consent of the
commissioners, set out the recommendations. One could say that the two
approaches were complementary: the florid
rhetoric of the introduction generated
enormous public interest in an otherwise
straightforward plan for reform.
A torrent of public interest and
academic criticism followed the report’s
release. The commissioners and staff
fanned out across the country to explain
and expand on its findings, and promote
interest in improving education at the
primary and secondary level. One thing was
certain: the nation had gotten the message, and people wanted a change for the
better. Education was no longer the low
man on the totem pole; indeed, not since
Sputnik had its visibility been so high. The
rest, as they say, is history.
☐
vention into schools. In the new environment, both parties had
reasons, constitutive and strategic, to pursue reforms that promised to enhance overall school quality.
Finally, the economic vision of schooling also sets priorities in
the allocation of resources and attention for school reform. In
higher education, as numerous critics have pointed out, more
dollars are allocated to economically important areas like technology and science, while traditionally important but less practical
subjects like humanities and the arts have been neglected.26
At the elementary and secondary level, much of the attention
has been paid to reading and math, the two areas for which annual
testing is required under No Child Left Behind, to the neglect of
untested areas. Many states have cut funding for music and the arts
in order to maximize time and resources for tested subjects.27 In
short, the rise of the economic view of schooling has powerfully
reshaped the divisions in educational politics and has focused the
aims of schooling tightly around learning that has economic value.
inclination to institutionalize blame for whatever is going wrong;
the formal part of the learning process cannot be separated from
its societal context.”30
Critics have charged that by ignoring the role of these external
factors, A Nation at Risk unfairly scapegoated educators.31 There
is truth to this, but it is also the case that developments in educational research were giving increasing support to the idea that
schools did, or at least could, play a powerful role in affecting
student outcomes.
Research subsequent to James S. Coleman’s 1966 report on
educational opportunity, known as the Coleman Report, concluded
that the idea that family background was so powerful that school
factors did not appreciably shape student outcomes was overblown.
Shifting Responsibility for Education
Hidden in plain sight in A Nation at Risk’s analysis was the responsibility that it placed on schools as the source of the problem and
as the solution. By pointing the finger at declining standards and
a diffusing mission, the authors placed responsibility squarely on
schools to the exclusion of a range of other societal factors. As they
wrote, “We conclude that declines in educational performance
are in large part the result of disturbing inadequacies in the way
the educational process itself is often conducted.”28
While the report repeatedly mentioned the importance of a
wide variety of stakeholders, including parents, students, unions,
business groups, and legislatures, its call for excellence focused
primarily on schools themselves as the prime enforcers of a new
set of expectations: “Excellence characterizes a school or college
that sets high expectations and goals for all learners, then tries in
every way possible to help students reach them.” Not surprisingly,
the commission’s recommendations were also focused on school
variables, such as increasing academic course-taking requirements for graduation.
In adopting this school-centered analysis, A Nation at Risk
implicitly rejected the broader view that school performance is a
result of both school and societal factors. A 1977 College Board
report, for example, sought to explain the same decline in SAT
scores; its analysis allocated responsibility much more widely.
Drawing on a variety of different kinds of evidence and offering a
much more careful (if necessarily less definitive) analysis, the
report concluded that a range of factors, both in school and out,
were partially responsible for the decline in SAT scores.
Among the nonschool factors cited by the College Board: the
increase in the time students spent watching television, a growth
in single-parent families, changes in the composition of students
taking the test, and the impact of the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s
on the psyche and motivation of individual students. The authors
concluded, “So there is no one cause of the SAT score decline, at
least as far as we can discern, and we suspect no single pattern of
causes. Learning is too much a part of Life to have expected anything else.”29 In a warning to those who sought a simpler analysis,
one that would focus attention narrowly on schools, the authors
wrote: “[A]ny attempt to isolate developments in the schools from
those in the society at large turns out to reflect principally the
The researchers argued that by focusing on measurable school
resources (books in the library, for example), the Coleman Report
ignored the school process variables that differentiated low- and
high-quality schools. These researchers—pioneers of what was
dubbed the “effective schools movement”—found that high-quality
schools generally shared five characteristics: “strong administrative
leadership, high expectations for achievement, an orderly learning
environment, an emphasis on basic skills and frequent monitoring
of student progress.”32
Coleman and his colleagues reached similar conclusions in
their prominent studies of Catholic schools, which found that the
sense of shared mission and high expectations that characterized
these private schools produced higher levels of learning than
similar public schools. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s book The Good
High School put less emphasis on order and discipline but also
found that a school’s atmosphere, principal leadership, respect
for teachers, and high expectations were key ingredients in school
success.33 In sum, while the specific characteristics of success were
debated, and continue to be, there was a growing sense by the
mid- to late 1970s that schools could make a considerable difference in student learning, even for students who came from highly
challenging family situations.
At the same time, the country experienced a broader decline
in collective responsibility for schooling. By the early 1980s, the
desegregation movement, America’s most concerted effort to
assume broader responsibility for schooling, had long since
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
25
fallen by the wayside. In light of the failures of busing and the
anti–welfare state political climate that it helped to produce,34
political leaders of both parties became averse to discussing the
antipoverty or school integration measures that many critics
argued were necessary for real reform.
Margaret Weir and Ira Katznelson point to the way that postwar
shifts toward suburbanization, aided by government construction
of highways and Federal Housing Administration mortgage guarantees, exacerbated racial and socioeconomic segregation and
eroded collective responsibility for schooling.35 The consequences
of these shifts for schools (and neighborhoods) that remain in
concentrated poverty have been disastrous, a point that has been
amply documented in a series of social scientific studies beginning with William Julius Wilson’s* The Truly Disadvantaged.36
Journalistic critics like Jonathan Kozol and Alex Kotlowitz have
History has shown that top-down
technocratic approaches have
limited power in generating
school improvement.
dramatized the traumatic consequences for children of the growth
of high-poverty schools and neighborhoods and the unfairness
of this arrangement in a land that promises equal opportunity.37
But this time, the social scientific consensus and moral claims
for fairness were running against the political tide, and political
leaders steered clear of anything that could be linked to busing.38
In this regard, the school-centered analysis offered by A Nation
at Risk provided a comfortable template for risk-averse political
leaders—it put responsibility squarely on the schools and, consistent with the broader political temper of the times, did not ask
for redistribution of resources or otherwise challenge the structural inequalities of schooling.
The analysis of A Nation at Risk placed a set of boundaries
around the responsibility for improving schooling that has continued to mark the debate in the years since. The calls for educator
accountability that have become prominent in recent years take
as their premise the idea that schools are, at minimum, substantially responsible for student outcomes.
This emphasis on school responsibility has created a fundamental divide that has persisted through the subsequent battles over
school reform, with many teachers arguing that it is unfair for them
to be judged on outcomes that are at least partly out of their control,
and with political reformers preaching the mantra of accountability
and “no excuses.” Again, the lines are teachers versus politicians and
parents, as opposed to left versus right, as many school reformers
on the left and center-left have welcomed greater educator accountability as a means to use schools to break cycles of poverty.
The result has been a downward spiral of distrust between
policymakers and practitioners. As policymakers have sought to
increase control through standards and accountability, teachers
and their representatives have increasingly resisted what they see
as misplaced blame and narrowing of curriculum. This resistance
only hardens the resolve of policymakers to increase their levels
of regulation and control, beginning the cycle anew.
Finally, embracing an essentially managerial effort to improve
schools’ performance precludes a broader discussion of structural
reform (combating poverty, improving housing and employment)
or societal responsibility for improving schools (desegregation).
In this regard, the debate over schools reflects a rightward shift
away from comprehensive efforts to improve high-poverty schools
and neighborhoods.
Getting Out from Under the Shadow
of A Nation at Risk
While international comparisons and video studies of classrooms
continue to suggest American students do need a more rigorous
and challenging education—confirming one part of A Nation at
Risk’s basic message—history has also shown that top-down
technocratic approaches have limited power in generating school
improvement.
Today, we would do well to embrace a different set of aims,
remembering that schooling is as much about expanding the mind
as it is about preparing people for jobs, that policymakers must
empower educators to learn and grow rather than seek to control
them, and that issues outside of schools, such as poverty and
healthcare, must be tackled alongside those within schools if the
goal is real progress for all of our students. These are not popular
positions in the public debate, because such positions require that
we see schooling as more than a utilitarian enterprise, that we trust
a profession constantly under fire,† and that we fight poverty in ways
that the American public has traditionally not supported.
The most promising people to argue for these positions are
teachers themselves. Teachers are among the few professionals
in American society who recognize the intrinsic benefits of reading Shakespeare or exploring Newton’s laws. Teachers are the
ones who understand that you enhance the profession by making
it the kind that people want to join. And teachers are the ones who
experience firsthand the effects that our stingy welfare state policies have on our most vulnerable citizens. Unless, or until, educators make this case, powerfully and clearly, they will continue to
operate within the paradigm created by A Nation at Risk.
☐
Endnotes
1. William L. Boyd and Charles T. Kerchner, eds., The Politics of Excellence and Choice in
Education: 1987 Yearbook of the Politics of Education Association (New York: Palmer Press,
1988); Joseph T. Murphy, ed., The Educational Reform Movement of the 1980s: Perspectives
(Continued on page 44)
*For more on the problem of concentrated urban poverty, see Wilson’s article “Being
Poor, Black, and American” in the Spring 2011 issue of American Educator, available
at www.aft.org/ae/spring2011/wilson.
26 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
†
For more about the intense scrutiny of the teaching profession, see “Quieting the
Teacher Wars” in the Spring 2015 issue of American Educator, available at www.aft.
org/ae/spring2015/goldstein.
THE PROFESSIONAL EDUCATOR
The Need for More
Teachers of Color
By José Luis Vilson
I
f I’ve done the math correctly, out of the 50 or so teachers I’ve
had in my lifetime, only two or three of them were men who
were black and/or Latino. For someone who is 33 years old
and was born and raised in New York City, a place often celebrated for its diversity, that’s staggering.
You’re allowed to wonder why that’s so important. After all,
teachers of all races, backgrounds, sexes, and ages have proven to
be effective educators of urban youth. In fact, I love that many
white people care enough about the plight of black and Latino
students that they seek to work in the neighborhoods in which
these students live. Throughout my own education, many of my
white teachers were excellent. I understand that there needs to be
José Luis Vilson is a blogger, speaker, and math teacher in New York City,
where he has taught for 10 years. Parts of this article are drawn from his
book This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education
(Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014), and are reproduced with permission
of Haymarket Books.
a diversity of experiences; our students have to survive in the same
world as everyone else. A small part of me also thinks: Who better
to teach students of color the tools needed to survive in a predominantly white country than white people?
But as a teacher of color, I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t disturbed by the lack of representation of black and Latino people,
especially males, as teachers. Some work as principals and district
administrators. Others are third-party vendors, education lawyers,
and professors in institutions of higher education. Effective (and
ineffective) teachers often leave the classroom in favor of these
occupations; while plenty of men do great work in administration,
many use it as a steppingstone to stay in education without grounding themselves in the educational practice of the classroom.
Because about 75 percent of our nation’s teachers are women,
many in society also view teaching as “women’s work,” a category
that often leads to demeaning and obtuse ways of dismissing
teachers’ contributions. This dynamic compounds the already
existing problem of society talking down to educators in our
schools. Too many people don’t see the need to pay teachers well
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
27
ILLUSTRATIONS BY VIKTOR KOEN
Professional educators—in the classroom, library, counseling
center, or anywhere in between—share one overarching
goal: ensuring all students receive the rich, well-rounded
education they need to be productive, engaged citizens. In
this regular feature, we explore the work of professional
educators—their accomplishments and their challenges—
so that the lessons they have learned can benefit students
across the country. After all, listening to the professionals
who do this work every day is a blueprint for success.
or to ensure they have proper working conditions because educators are regarded as caretakers, not professionals. While maledominated professions like computer science or medicine garner
respect, the teaching profession still has to combat patriarchy.
The fact that so many people view teaching as a second-class
profession speaks volumes about our society’s values. Plenty of men
talk favorably about teachers, but when asked if they’d ever be
teachers themselves, they respond, “I don’t have the patience,” and
“You guys don’t get paid enough.” In our society, money means
stature, whether we value the occupation or not. It’s not just coming
from the younger generation, either.
My mom, whom I love dearly, on
occasion wonders aloud why, with
all the stress I endure as a teacher, I
would put up with my job when I
could make far more as a computer
programmer.
There are those who have left the
profession because it’s really easy to
become jaded about the school system and the human experience. I
don’t know any fellow black or Latino
teachers who think that every student in their school is getting properly served by this system. Some
conclude that the system is hopeless.
Others say, “We’ll continue to fight.”
The latter are crucial: when our students see more black or Latino sports
figures populating a multimilliondollar basketball court or football
field, yet see only one black or Latino
teacher in their whole grade, or two
or three in their whole school, then
they’re probably less inspired to take
their own education, inside and outside the classroom, seriously.
To be clear, I’m not speaking for
every person of color here, but I’m
calling things like I see them. I’m black and Latino. I’m a guy who
grew up in public housing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
You may or may not share any of these characteristics, and whether
you share all of them, some of them, or none of them, you may or
may not agree with me. No one group of people—people of color
included—is monolithic in their thinking or experience. And just
because someone is a person of color does not mean he or she grew
up poor. But based on my experiences as someone who came of
age in a pretty tough neighborhood, and then shocked everyone,
including myself, by becoming a middle school teacher, I have some
insights into schools and teaching as both a student and an educator of color.
graduate with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, but then
my college roommate showed me the movie Office Space and I realized I didn’t want to spend my life longing for my stapler or beating
up dysfunctional printers. Instead, I wanted to teach students
whose backgrounds were similar to mine. A few years after earning
my undergraduate degree in computer science from Syracuse, I
enrolled in the New York City Teaching Fellows program, which
places candidates in schools in three high-poverty regions of New
York City. I chose to work in the Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights/Inwood, which is
predominately inhabited by people
who speak Spanish.
When I started teaching there, the
neighborhood had already become
a mostly Dominican (as in Dominican Republic) stronghold, a little DR
in the United States, so to speak. But
it was still home to a hodgepodge of
cultures, a conglomeration of Puerto
Rican, black, and Chinese blue-collar
workers. As someone who grew up in
similar circumstances, I came to the
Heights because it’s where I thought
I could make a contribution.
With only seven weeks of preservice training under my belt, I, like
so many bright-eyed, bushy-tailed
teachers, was filled to the brim with
hope and enthusiasm. Such feelings
usually fade fast, partly due to the
strain of the school year, but also due
to the pressure to perform miracles
under deplorable learning conditions and the lack of agency to make
things better. Challenges such as lack
of autonomy, teacher isolation, and
inadequate administrative support
are easier to solve than teacher pay,
yet they also fall under the top reasons why many teachers, especially
teachers of color, leave, and why those of us who do stay learn to
temper our zeal.
My first adviser in the NYC Teaching Fellows program predicted
that I wouldn’t survive my first year of teaching because of the passion I exuded during my pre-service teaching. Ten years later, I tell
others what I told him. I thrived then, and continue to do so now,
not because of my idealism but because of my idealistic realism.
The difference between idealism and idealistic realism is that
the former suggests a wishful dream far removed from reality. The
latter, which I’ve often found with teachers of color (and those
who have worked in high-poverty schools with a student body
that’s predominantly of color), is that we hold fast to the vision of
a better country, a better town, a better neighborhood, where
students find success in positive and enlightening ways. Yet, we
do this in the context of their lives, and not based on our projections of what success looks like for them. We’re not trying to mold
them into what we believe they should be. We’re trying to open
doors to show them alternatives for what they could be.
As a teacher of color, I’d be
lying if I told you I wasn’t
disturbed by the lack of
representation of black and
Latino people, especially
males, as teachers.
Making a Contribution
For a decade, I have been a New York City public school teacher,
teaching students math at Inwood Intermediate School (IS 52) in
the neighborhood of Washington Heights. I hadn’t always intended
to become an educator. I attended Syracuse University seeking to
28 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
In The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled
Profession,* journalist Dana Goldstein suggests that we recruit more
teachers of color, saying “A half century of research and 150 years
of practical experience show teachers of color are more likely to
hold high expectations for students of color.”
Yet the number of teachers of color still lags far behind the
number of white educators. Of the nearly 3.4 million public school
teachers in the United States in 2011–2012, the year for which
most recent data are available, nearly 82 percent were white, and
approximately 18 percent were of
color.† Only about 4 percent were
men of color.1 For that same year,
nearly 52 percent of public school
students were white and approximately 48 percent were of color.2
With a predominantly white
profession and a student body
that’s now majority nonwhite, we
must consider the importance of
recruiting teachers of color, especially male teachers of color. Just as
integration by socioeconomic status can promote racial diversity
while narrowing the achievement
gap between low-income and
more-affluent students,‡ increasing
the percentage of teachers of color
would narrow what I call the vision
gap—the gap that can arise in how
low-income and more-affluent
students view themselves as future
professionals.
After all, children can’t be what
they can’t see. By hiring more teachers of color (in particular, those who
grew up economically challenged,
like I did), students of color can form
relationships with professionals
who may share their cultural background and possess powerful narratives for success.
whom were veterans with strong content and pedagogical knowledge and classroom management skills.
With only a month and a half’s worth of training, I relied heavily
on my ability to connect with students through their culture to
survive that first year. I didn’t yet have the experience that my older
colleagues possessed, and I was not as sure of my teaching ability,
so I was probably harder on myself than I needed to be. But according to others, I fared just fine. Some teachers in my first year
approached me to ask for advice on how to handle certain situations, and I couldn’t tell them
because I didn’t have the words for it.
I usually referred them to veteran
teachers in the building, who they
seemed to be afraid of. I didn’t
understand it then, but all those
times that I called my students’ parents and spoke to them in Spanish,
used my students’ home language to
help them understand math, and
followed them from class to class, my
genuine connection to their backgrounds was enabling me to develop
a positive relationship with them. I
had an instant leg up because I could
see things through their eyes, and
because I’d been where they’d been
and still found success.
My colleagues acknowledged that
my efforts were paying off. When I
came into the school building one
morning, a dean spotted me in the
hallway as I was escorting my students to lunch and said in his burly
growl, “Vilson, you’re doing a yeoman’s job!”
I said, “Huh?”
“A yeoman’s job!”
“What?”
“You’re doing a HELLUVA job,
Vilson!”
“Thanks.”
Despite the fact that many white teachers (like that dean)
acknowledge the important contributions made by teachers of
color, some still doubt the need for a diverse educator workforce.
Here, I want to state clearly that we need more research, including
quantitative research, on the effects of black male educators on
student outcomes. For instance, a recent study suggests that teachers of color specifically could help to improve the academic
achievement of students of color.3 Based on my own experiences,
I believe it’s important for children of color, especially male children
of color, to see teachers of color, especially male teachers of color,
as role models.
Whenever someone like me suggests that public schools do in
fact need more teachers of color, the first question inevitably
asked is, “Do you think we need to get rid of white teachers?” and,
as a corollary, “Are you saying white teachers can’t teach children
of color?” That’s not what I’m saying at all. If anything, balance
matters for our students.
With a predominantly white
profession and a student body
that’s now majority nonwhite,
we must consider the
importance of recruiting
teachers of color.
A Genuine Connection
When I first walked into the classroom as a teaching fellow, my
students were mostly from low-income families and were Dominican and black. Just like me. They raised their eyebrows the first time
I stood in front of them; they looked as if they had never before seen
a teacher of color. At the time, most of the male adults of color at the
school were deans and administrators, who had been quickly
shuffled out of the classroom into their positions. My students may
have had a few women of color as teachers as well, almost all of
*For an excerpt, see “Quieting the Teacher Wars” in the Spring 2015 issue of
American Educator, available at www.aft.org/ae/spring2015/goldstein.
†
The National Center for Education Statistics identifies teachers of color as black,
Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaska Native, and two or more
races.
‡
For more on socioeconomic school integration, see “From All Walks of Life” in the
Winter 2012–2013 issue of American Educator, available at www.aft.org/ae/
winter2012-2013/kahlenberg.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
29
I would suggest that children of color need access to the ways
and means of the dominant culture, and who better to teach that
than white teachers and teachers of color who have mastered it? As
Lisa Delpit writes in her book Other People’s Children: Cultural
Conflict in the Classroom, “Teachers need to support the language
that students bring to school, provide them input from an additional code, and give them the opportunity to use the new code in
a nonthreatening, real communicative context.” Survival in this
country often depends on understanding the code to success (the
phrase “college and career ready”
comes to mind here), and if white
teachers and teachers of color can
show children of color the values and
norms of our dominant culture, then
we can close the vision gap for those
students.
Educators of color can also make
a positive impact on white students.
Often, the onus of developing cultural competence falls solely on
teachers of color. A more diverse
teaching population can help white
students interact with and understand people of different races and
cultures. It would also enable them
to see people of color in positions of
authority. Exposure to peers and
adults with different experiences
and worldviews helps all children
develop empathy for others and
assess their own humanity.
Yet, the hiring of white teachers,
which historically resulted in the
removal of teachers of color, has
often been, for all intents and purposes, a matter of public policy. For
instance, when the Supreme Court
began to mandate that southern
states comply with Brown v. Board of
Education, more than 30,000 black teachers and administrators
were fired to ensure that white teachers kept their jobs. Even the
1966 merger of the National Education Association and the American Teachers Association, a historically black teachers union, didn’t
sway many teachers of either race to see the common struggle of
teaching in America.4 However well intentioned, the merger didn’t
ultimately improve the racial and gender dynamics that continued
to play out in schools and union meetings.*
Fast-forward to this century, and a closer look at teacher demographics in New York City speaks volumes as to why we need to hire
teachers of color. According to a report published by the New York
City Independent Budget Office, the share of teachers staffing highpoverty schools in 2011–2012, the year for which most recent data
are available, was approximately 44 percent white, 25 percent black,
24 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent Asian, with other subgroups not
reported.5 In low-poverty schools, the percentage of white teachers
is substantially higher, at approximately 73 percent, while the percentages of black and Hispanic teachers are only 12 percent and 8
percent, respectively. Asian teachers’ share is about the same, at 6
percent. The report also noted that “teachers in high-poverty schools
transfer to other New York City public schools in larger numbers,
suggesting that student characteristics might be an important factor
in turnover decisions.”
When I ask some of my colleagues
of color why they stay in high-poverty
schools, they often say it’s because
they feel as if they’re paying their successes forward, opening doors for
their students, and teaching them to
succeed. Few, if any, ever point to job
protections and benefits, though
both help to ensure that teachers
make a career of the profession.
To further complicate matters,
teachers of color leave the profession at a faster rate than their white
peers,6 not due to salaries or benefits
but because of learning and working
conditions. Too often, the highpoverty schools where teachers of
color typically work are either overmanaged by outside consultants or
in the process of being shut down by
their mayor or governor. While it’s
certainly true that poor management and lack of funding can negatively affect teachers at any school,
such problems hit our high-poverty
schools the hardest and often make
professional concerns personal for
teachers of color.
I relied heavily on my ability
to connect with students
through their culture to
survive that first year.
*In 1957, the American Federation of Teachers expelled locals that refused to
desegregate.
30 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
Professional and Cultural
Competence
To truly transform our education
system and recruit and retain teachers of color, we must push multiple levers. One lever is ensuring the cultural competence of all
educators. In October 2014, 11 civil rights groups ranging from the
NAACP and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational
Fund to the National Urban League and the Southeast Asia Resource
Action Center came together to lay out a handful of reforms and
principles that would help narrow achievement gaps and push
education in America into the 21st century. One of these principles
focused on professional competence:
Systems of preparation and ongoing development should
ensure that educators have the time, investments, and supports
necessary to acquire the knowledge about curriculum, teaching, assessment, linguistic and cultural competence, implicit
bias, and student support needed to teach students effectively.
This should include additional supports for education professionals who serve children and families in historically underresourced and disadvantaged classrooms and schools. School
systems should recognize educators’ abilities, particularly in
working with diverse learners and students of color. They
should not only create incentives for education professionals
to develop or acquire additional skills, but also require professional learning to ensure their effectiveness in the classroom.7
Thus, professional competence and cultural competence go
hand in hand. We don’t just teach subject matter; we teach the
students in front of us. And if we
share the same skin color and cultural and socioeconomic background as they do, we can serve as
immediate models for success.
From an administrative standpoint,
having more teachers of color in a
school means there may be more
teachers whom students can turn
to and feel comfortable having conversations with about certain situations. I’ve often joked that some
teachers of color could earn loads
of professional development credit
for all the racial situations they
must address in schools, and perhaps that’s a benefit administrators
should consider in hiring a diverse
faculty. With more teachers of color
in buildings with students of color,
administrators and teachers alike
can turn to one another to foster a
more inclusive school community
and advocate for all children.
I
In my first month of teaching, I told them, I had this crazy idea
that I would transform my students’ lives and that they would change
for me the way that students of famed educator Jaime Escalante did
in the movie Stand and Deliver. They didn’t. But that first class was
probably my favorite, and the one from which I learned the most.
One time, we did a lesson on percentages. I wrote my lesson
using the technical aspects of finding percentages. As I began to
teach it and saw the bored looks on my students’ faces, I had an
idea. I wrote the word “percent” out
and asked my students, “Does anyone recognize a word in here?”
“Cent!”
I said, “Oh, good! Now, has anyone
ever heard of the word somewhere
else, even in Spanish?”
Students jumped out of their seats,
they were so excited to answer.
A few shouted, “Ooh! Ooh!
Centavo!”
“So what does centavo mean?”
“A penny!”
“And how many pennies do you
need to get a dollar?”
“A hundred!”
“So when we say percent, we mean
we’re comparing one thing out of a
possible hundred.”
“OOHHHHH!!”
That piece of my lesson took a few
more minutes than I had planned for,
I explained. But it also made a huge
difference. Teachers who can relate to
their students on a cultural level can
reach their students in important ways.
I’m not saying people from other
cultures can’t help us, but every student of color could use a role model.
If that role model just happens to be
the teacher in front of them, that’s a
good thing.
☐
With more teachers of color,
administrators and teachers
alike can turn to one another
to foster a more inclusive
school community.
n 2011, I had the privilege of
attending an event in Tarrytown, New York, held by the
organization Today’s Students
Tomorrow’s Teachers. The program
was founded by Bettye Perkins to
encourage more teachers of color to
enter the profession through an
eight-year program that provides mentorship for high school
students and scholarships for college tuition; all candidates have
to do is earn their certifications and become teachers. I wish such
a group had existed when I first came into my own, but I’m excited
that people like me have this opportunity now. I was invited to
share a few remarks, which I titled “It’s Not about a Salary, It’s All
about Reality,” a quote from rapper and producer KRS-One’s classic “My Philosophy”:
Who gets weaker? The king or the teacher?
It’s not about a salary; it’s all about reality
Teachers teach and do the world good
Kings just rule and most are never understood
I shared these lines to encourage the attendees to consider the
ways educators inspire students to think for themselves. I also
gave a few words of advice—for example, “Sample the best teachers from your past, but make your own story.”
Endnotes
1. “Number and Percentage Distribution of Teachers in Public and Private Elementary and Secondary
Schools, by Selected Teacher Characteristics: Selected Years, 1987–88 through 2011–12,” in
National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 2013, table 209.10.
2. “Enrollment and Percentage Distribution of Enrollment in Public Elementary and Secondary
Schools, by Race/Ethnicity and Level of Education: Fall 1998 through Fall 2023,” in National Center
for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 2013, table 203.60.
3. Anna J. Egalite, Brian Kisida, and Marcus A. Winters, “Representation in the Classroom: The
Effect of Own-Race Teachers on Student Achievement,” Economics of Education Review 45
(2015): 44–52.
4. David Cecelski’s Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina, and the Fate of Black
Schools in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994) provides a detailed
account of the devastation visited upon African American educators in North Carolina in the wake
of Brown v. Board of Education. Cecelski estimates that more than 30,000 southern African
American educators lost their jobs in the process of school desegregation. See also chapter 10 of
Adam Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press, 2007).
5. New York City Independent Budget Office, Demographics and Work Experience: A Statistical
Portrait of New York City’s Public School Teachers (New York: Independent Budget Office, 2014), 4.
6. Richard Ingersoll and Henry May, Recruitment, Retention and the Minority Teacher Shortage
(Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research in Education, 2011), 24.
7. “Civil Rights Groups Demand Accountability for Equity in Public Education,” National
Opportunity to Learn Campaign, October 28, 2014, www.otlcampaign.org/blog/2014/10/28/
civil-rights-groups-demand-accountability-equity-public-education.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
31
A Window to the Past
What an Essay Contest Reveals about Early American Education
By Benjamin Justice
P
encils ready?
[Write] an essay on a system of liberal education, and
literary instruction, adapted to the genius of the government, and best calculated to promote the general welfare of the United States; comprehending, also, a plan
for instituting and conducting public schools in this
country on principles of the most extensive utility.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY GIANNI DE CONNO
This was the question posed by America’s premier scholarly
association, the American Philosophical Society (APS), in 1795.
Benjamin Justice is an associate professor of education in the Graduate
School of Education at Rutgers University. He is the author of The War That
Wasn’t: Religious Conflict and Compromise in the Common Schools of
New York State, 1865–1900 (2009). This article is excerpted from his edited
book, The Founding Fathers, Education, and “the Great Contest”: The
American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), which won the 2014 Critics Choice Book Award of the American
Educational Studies Association. Copyright 2013. Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved.
32 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
In a list of seven contest questions on various subjects, this education question came first, and had the largest prize, including $100
(in 1795 dollars, which is about $1,400 today) and publication by
the APS.1 The winners were chosen two years later, in 1797.
In today’s English, the question would mean:
Design the best system of education for the United States,
appropriate for the wealthy as well as the poor, including
secondary and higher education as well as elementary
schools, reaching people in remote areas as well as cities,
promoting the common good and strengthening our republican form of government.
No easy task in any era.
But these were no ordinary times. The nation’s leaders had just
completed their political revolution, with the states ratifying the
Constitution (in 1788) and Bill of Rights (in 1791). Despite their
monumental failures to end chattel slavery, honor the land rights
of indigenous people, or abolish the subordination of women, the
men referred to as the Founding Fathers had nevertheless
achieved a rare moment in history: applying ancient and modern
theories of government to the creation of a new country.
The APS education prize contest captured the excitement and
apprehension that the Founding Fathers felt about that creation.
With no king and no state church, the founders believed that
only through the virtue and intelligence of its citizens could the
American republic survive; and in federal and state law, governments took measures to encourage the spread of useful knowledge and virtue. They ensured the delivery of mail, protected
free speech, encouraged learned societies like the APS and
voluntary ones like the Freemasons, formed or reformed colleges and academies, and created funds to subsidize local
schooling efforts. In New England, state governments reaffirmed
colonial laws that required towns to maintain free elementary
schools or pay fines for noncompliance.
How to spread learning across the populace was indeed a
challenge, if one viewed education as being formal, functional
knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The very aspects
of society that intellectuals celebrated as uniquely American
made it difficult to educate the masses. America was diverse—
culturally, regionally, and religiously. Settlement patterns varied
by region, placing many families at significant distance from
each other, and from seats of government. Deeply held cultural
traditions varied as well, leaving people in some parts of the
United States more inclined to value formal education or pay
taxes to support it, and people in other parts less inclined.
There were other problems as well, more serious and intractable, that the American Revolution did not resolve. Should
women have an equal right to education? What about the nearly
one-fifth of Americans who lived as chattel slaves? Or the free
people of color who were nevertheless marked by the shade of
their skin?
Educating the mass of citizens, whether in the positive sense
of enhancing the interest of liberty or in the negative sense of
social control, or some of both, became a central preoccupation
of intellectuals in the 1780s and 1790s. Interest ran across the
political spectrum. Even before the war with Great Britain
ended, Thomas Jefferson joined John Adams and other leaders
in the effort to write grand educational provisions into state law.2
Over the course of the 1780s, as America slouched toward a
replacement for the Articles of Confederation, the question of
education in the republic gained popularity in magazines and
newspapers.3
Among these were fully formed, almost utopian plans for
systems of mass education through public schooling. Benjamin
Rush, a civic leader and one of this country’s Founding Fathers,
published essays recommending a statewide system of public
education for Pennsylvania, from universal elementary school
through college, for girls as well as boys; Noah Webster traveled
across the country delivering lectures and selling his new American textbooks, before using his federalist newspaper, the American Minerva, as a mouthpiece for educational reform; George
Washington urged Congress to found a national university.
Alongside a similar university proposal at the Constitutional
Convention of 1787, James Madison proposed that the federal
government be empowered to “encourage, by proper premiums
and provisions, the advancement of useful knowledge and
discoveries.”4
Madison’s educational proposals failed, but the APS picked
up the slack, serving as the nation’s leading intellectual institu-
tion and even, for a time, the informal library of Congress. Centered in the heart of what was then America’s largest city and
capital, Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society was
uniquely situated to take a crack at the challenge of education.
Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, the APS sought to
encourage and disseminate useful scientific and philosophical
information. It was the age of associations, when Enlightenment
intellectuals across Europe and, to a lesser extent, America
formed clubs and academies to share ideas and discoveries.
By the 1790s, the APS had become a significant institution in
the transatlantic intellectual world, maintaining correspondence
with similar institutions all over Europe. For a time, APS facilities
Educating the mass of citizens
became a central preoccupation
of intellectuals in the 1780s
and 1790s.
were home to portions of the University of Pennsylvania. The
membership list boasted the names of leading men of the day,
Founding Fathers and European Enlightenment thinkers from
Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Rush to
Linnaeus, Lafayette, Talleyrand, Priestley, Condorcet, and Crevecoeur. In their regular meetings, the society read and discussed
contemporary issues in science, government, economics, and
philosophy. A core of seven appointed members from various
fields met at least once a month, usually joined by others who
dropped in.5
The APS began awarding its first prize, the Magellanic Premium, for discoveries “relating to navigation, astronomy, or
natural philosophy,” in 1786. But the idea of sponsoring prize
contests was much older, of medieval origins, and had become
a staple of various European learned societies, which routinely
sponsored essay and scientific contests on a variety of subjects.
The most famous precursor to the APS education prize came
from an Academy of Lyon essay contest, sponsored by the Abbé
Raynal, in 1780. History teachers will appreciate the topic’s
enduring appeal: “Was the Discovery of America a blessing or a
curse to mankind?”6
The Contest Question
As with all utopian projects, the dreams implicit in the APS education prize exceeded the reality. The education question did not
frame an open competition of new ideas, but instead reflected
the pet educational reform agendas of APS members. It had two
very distinct parts. The first half of the question dealt with what
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
33
should be taught: curriculum and possibly pedagogy (as implied
by the word “system”). “[Write] an essay on a system of liberal
education, and literary instruction, adapted to the genius of the
government, and best calculated to promote the general welfare
of the United States.”
Rather than make its question general, the APS asked for
specific types of education, from two very different traditions.
The first, “liberal education,” referred to elite education and
required a discussion of college curriculum that, at the time,
aroused passionate debate over the role of ancient languages.
On the other hand, the phrase “literary instruction” could refer
to mass education in basic literacy (reading and writing), or to
academy- or college-level curriculum in vernacular literature.
Both of these, the question challenged, should reflect and promote the “genius” of the newly minted government and the
interest of the nation as a whole.
The men of the APS asked
for a single plan that would
cover the entire United States,
encompassing primary and
secondary education.
In post-Revolutionary America, a liberal education centered
on the “dead” languages of Greek and Latin and was, to a large
degree, synonymous with an academy diploma or college
degree, but it was both more and less. It was an education
afforded by free time for contemplation—quite literally, it was
“liberal” in the sense that education in ancient Athens was for
free men of means and not slaves (although some women had
one too).7 Invoking a “liberal education” entitled a man to be
heard on matters of politics and government. For many, a liberal
education also implied a certain moral stature, even in the case
of a woman.8 A few periodicals even aimed to provide a “liberal
education” to those who lacked one, by giving readers a monthly
dose of high intellectual culture.9
The dominant ideologies of the day argued that the American
republic could survive only if its people were virtuous and well
informed, and their rulers even more so.10 But while there was
widespread consensus among writers (especially among those
who had a liberal education) that a liberal education was necessary for creating future leaders, writers generally split into two
camps with regard to the future of liberal education. Traditionalists championed the continued study of the oratorical and moral
traditions of classics and classical languages, developing increasingly sophisticated rationales for existing practice. Reformers of
a more philosophical mindset—outspoken APS men such as
Franklin and Rush—argued that a liberal education should be
more useful, inquiry-based, and scientific.11
34 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
The second part of the APS essay question was really a separate
one: to develop a practical plan to build and operate public schools
across the nation. It read, “comprehending, also, a plan for instituting and conducting public schools in this country on principles of
the most extensive utility.”
This “public schools” portion of the question reflected a preoccupation of prominent leaders with a well-informed and virtuous citizenry on the one hand, and a homogeneous citizenry on
the other. While the word “public” was not meant in the modern
sense of the word, neither did it reflect any one specific definition or consistent usage. It could merely refer to education taking
place in public, as opposed to in the home. But it was more than
that too. The public schools described by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, for example, were to be funded in part with rent
from public land and overseen democratically by local voters.
New Englanders funded their public schools partially through
local tax and defined them legally as having democratic, lay
control by citizens, while also encouraging local clergy to oversee them (although some towns preferred to pay a fine rather
than keep a school). 12 Southern states almost universally
rejected the notion of public support for common education.
And at the collegiate level, public education had yet other meanings. Graduates of Dartmouth referred to themselves in 1786 as
having a “publick liberal education.”13
What the APS probably meant by public schools in its contest
question was that the schools should exist in the public sphere,
for the use and benefit of the general public, at some form of
common expense. Presumably, though it was not stated explicitly, these schools needed to embrace the curricular concerns
of the first part of the question, that is, liberal education and
literary instruction. Finally, these schools needed to be
described in a single plan that would cover the whole nation,
from the rural South, which had no tradition of public support
of education, to New England, which boasted one of the most
literate, best-educated populations in the world.14
Thus, the APS education contest did not ask for the best or
most original essay on education, but rather for an essay on
specific reforms. Beginning with “liberal education,” it moved
outward to increasingly general issues, with the unifying themes
of utility and national character. Despite its eagerness to emphasize the unique aspects of American society and government,
however, the APS addressed the very same issues that concerned
the French learned societies. The men of the APS asked for a
single plan that would cover the entire United States, encompassing primary and secondary education, taking a stand on the
issue of liberal education, and doing so in a way that was practical and uniquely American.
Vying for the Prize
The society placed advertisements in Philadelphia periodicals
(which had a national reach) in May of 1795, setting a deadline
for the education contest of January 1, 1797. A year passed with
no mention of an entry. By October 1796, there was still no mention of an entry, so the society tried more advertising. Finally,
on December 30, it reported having three essays. By a new April
1, 1797, deadline, the APS would have a total of seven.15
The peer reviewers followed a strict review methodology.
Each entry had to be anonymous, accompanied by a separate
envelope with the name and address of the author, which would
be opened only in the case of a winning essay. The APS secretary
numbered and/or titled each essay, and someone read it aloud
to the members of the society. The APS then assigned each to a
review committee, which was to write an impartial summary for
the benefit of the whole body.
Not all entries were created equal, however, and not all
reviews were quite as impartial as they may have claimed. Each
of the three strongest essays was long and carefully crafted, and
arrived by the original deadline. Once the essays were assigned
to review committees, they were numbered: No. 1 (written by
omy between elite liberal education and mass education—
sound educational principles were universal. Smith’s radical
plan eliminated dead languages for all but university students.
He made no argument for religious instruction.17
Contender No. 2: Samuel Knox wrote the most thorough and
detailed plan. Knox was a clergyman and a veteran teacher of
more than 15 years, and his 200-page plan reflected an intimate
knowledge of the classroom. Knox imagined a state-run, secular,
four-tiered system of mass education for males, including primary or “parish” schools, “county schools” or academies, state
colleges, and a national university. Like Smith, Knox argued that
The seven entries reveal a
decided lack of consensus
about American education.
Samuel Harrison Smith), No. 2 (written by Samuel Knox), and
No. 3 (anonymous, but very likely written by Rev. William
Smith). The author of No. 3 hoped to collect the essay in the
event it lost the competition, asking the committee to return it
care of a nearby tavern keeper. When No. 3 did lose, the essay
was duly delivered—and thus does not survive in the archives
of the APS. What does survive, however, is the review committee’s report.16
Contender No. 1: Samuel Harrison Smith, a newspaper editor
in Philadelphia, wrote a highly theoretical, 79-page argument
built upon the prevailing discussion in Scottish philosophy
about the nature of virtue: were men born inherently good or
evil, or were they blank slates, or somewhere in between? From
a lengthy discussion of what he saw as the connection between
“virtue and wisdom,” he proceeded to outline a three-tiered
system of free, compulsory public education for the boys and
men of the United States funded through property tax.
Smith argued that the first-tier schools should be of two types:
primary schools for boys ages 5 to 10, and secondary schools for
boys ages 10 to 18. These should focus primarily on reading,
writing, and ’rithmetic (the three Rs, the saying goes), but at the
secondary level should also include history, geography,
mechanics, memorizing portions of the Constitution, and other
“useful” studies. The second tier, state colleges, and the third, a
national university, would be available at public expense to a
select group of students promoted from lower schools, as well
as to those who could afford tuition. Smith rejected the dichot-
each level should select a small percentage of students to move
to the next, but unlike Smith, Knox saw clearer distinctions
between education for the masses and education for the elite.
Primary schools would teach the three Rs, but academies should
emphasize Ancient Greek and Latin first, followed by French
and arithmetic.
Knox’s plans for colleges and a national university did not
imagine anything unusual, except that he punctuated his plans
with obsessive detail, from the size and relative position of professors’ residences to the design of the iron gates. Although Knox
was a clergyman, he placed relatively little importance on religious education, urging schools at all levels to protect freedom
of conscience by avoiding sectarian instruction and limiting
religious content to brief, universalist prayers at the start and
finish of the day. He also urged a uniform collection of national
textbooks, and state boards of education to oversee local schools.
He conceded the possibility that local families may want to send
their girls to primary school, in which case he argued that all
schoolmasters should be married, so that their wives could teach
separate classes for girls. As with all the essayists, he did not
discuss race.18
Contender No. 3: This essay has gone unnoticed by historians, though significant artifacts of it survive either as quotations
or in summary. Forty-seven pages in length, the language is
provocative, as the committee noted, and the proposal differs
from its peers on key points. The author was probably Rev. William Smith, former provost of the University of Pennsylvania and
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
35
founder of Washington College. First, Rev. Smith put nonsectarian religious instruction front and center in his proposal, writing,
“Morality was ever constructed as inseparable from the principles of Religion.” At higher levels of education, Rev. Smith saw
no conflict between science and giving “due homage to the
Supreme Creator who established its Laws.”
As did most of the others, Rev. Smith proposed a three-tiered
system of schools, comprising free primary schools for poor
children—presumably both girls and boys, since they were to be
taught by “masters and mistresses”—and offering instruction in
“national language, Arithmetic, morality, and a general descrip-
possibly faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. One author,
with the pseudonym “Hand,” wrote that a national university
should oversee all education by setting national standards. In
addition, he believed that higher education should take a more
direct role in managing common schools, training and overseeing teachers, and providing professional development in the
form of lectures on special topics. The final contestant, “Freedom,” argued that the acquisition of literacy was a mechanical
art, virtually devoid of thought or personal expression. He then
devoted his essay to weighing every aspect of the academic curriculum against the idea of “utility” and emphasized basic medi-
State-sponsored public education
has become a universal public
good, found in nearly every
nook of the globe.
tion of the terrestrial globe.” These schools would be run by
justices of the peace or “corporations.” At the next level, central
schools or academics would provide two separate courses—a
short course for future teachers and a longer academic course
that would be the equivalent of college. At the highest level, a
national university would set the standards for all levels of education, provide the highest levels of education available, and
provide inspectors for lower schools. Existing colleges and universities could become “central schools” in this plan. At the end
of the essay, Rev. Smith listed an unusual provision: schoolmistresses would be ranked equally with professors at the central
schools, potentially creating a professional teaching career for
educated women.19
Other entrants: There were four weaker and shorter submissions as well. One written by Francis Hoskins, a Philadelphia
accountant, focused on classroom concerns—the school schedule, rewards and punishments, schoolhouse architecture, and
teachers. Another essay was likely submitted by John Hobson,
a Unitarian minister from Birmingham, England, who fled to
America after a mob burned down his church and home. He
wrestled with curriculum theory; discussed teaching literacy to
children, including the use of phonetics; and laid out a system
of building, funding, and maintaining public schools through a
statewide property tax.
Two others remain anonymous, despite extensive archival
research to determine the authors’ identities, but both appear
to have been connected to the study of medicine, as students or
36 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
cal training, no doubt a response to the deadly epidemics that
had begun to sweep through Philadelphia in the 1790s.
And the Winner Is…
At a June 1797 meeting, society president Thomas Jefferson
ordered a special meeting to judge the seven entries for the
education prize. For one month, the seven essays lay together
on a table, inside Philosophical Hall, which the society kept open
every day (except on Sundays) so that members had “ample
opportunity of estimating the comparative merits of the Essays
on this important Subject.” The general public was not invited.20
The seven entries reveal a decided lack of consensus about
American education—even in a context as selective as the APS
contest. Written as questions, these uncertainties sound hauntingly familiar to educationists of any generation: How can (or
should) religion be taught in public schools? Is higher education
an entitlement or a privilege? Should schools prepare students
to be better workers, better thinkers, or better human beings?
What role should the federal government have in dictating local
school policy?
Given their high aspirations, it should be no surprise that the
members of the APS were frustrated with the results: only three
strong contenders. Finally, in December of 1797, the APS decided
that Samuel Harrison Smith and Samuel Knox should share the
prize. But the body resolved that neither essay was exactly what
it was looking for, and immediately explored the possibility of a
second contest. It never happened. Over the ensuing century, the
winning essays made their way into the canon of early republican
writing on education, while the contest became an iconic moment
for historians of American education.
Taken together, the essays provide us with a window into the
ideas and beliefs of educational reformers at the birth of the
United States. While the educational writings of more prominent
leaders are well known—Jefferson’s plans for Virginia, Benjamin
Rush’s for Pennsylvania, and Noah Webster’s textbooks for the
whole nation, for example—the APS contest introduces us to a
second tier of educational reformers: a newspaper publisher, an
accountant, the principal of an academy, a political refugee, a
health and well-being of any society. If the APS contest is, for the
historian of the early republic, a rich source for understanding
the 1790s, it is also, for the scholar of modernity, a useful starting
point for understanding the relationship between public schools
and state building that has laid the foundation of global
liberalism.
Whether we view the great contest narrowly or generally, as
a source for political theory or historical understanding (or
both), the challenge of finding the ideal system of education for
the United States remains as relevant and fruitful today as it did
when the APS deemed it as being worthy of a contest. The knowledge it produced is still useful.
☐
Endnotes
1. “Premiums,” The American Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal, May 1795, American
Periodicals Series Online (hereafter cited as APSO); and Minute Book of the American
Philosophical Society, American Philosophical Society Archives (hereafter cited as APS
Minute Book), entry for May 1, 1795.
2. Thomas Jefferson, “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” in Jefferson
Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Library of America, 1984), 365–373. John
Adams was the primary author of the Massachusetts State Constitution of 1780.
3. Readers may refer to the APSO, which allows for keyword searches online. The number of
articles containing the word “education” jumps dramatically over the course of the 1780s.
4. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1966), 2:321–322.
former university head, and two writers who remain anonymous. The winning essays by Smith and Knox provide us with
substantial, well-crafted arguments drawing together the best
educational literature of their time. Yet the losing essays, too,
give us an indication of the problems and solutions of American
education through the eyes of more ordinary men.
Why should their vision matter? It’s fair to say that all the
essays favored the same general late-18th-century Enlightenment orientation as the APS, and were thus not indicative of the
full range of views on education at the time. But we must also
recognize that the men of the APS (and others like them) led the
revolution, wrote the Declaration of Independence and federal
and state constitutions, and served in the highest political offices
in the land. The essays of the APS contest offer us a link between
the political vision of the United States and its educational significance. What did the Founding Fathers think about public
education in America? It’s not an easy question to answer, but
the APS contest is a great place to start.
The award of the prize in 1797 to Smith and Knox did not
signal the end of the conversation about education in the republic, but instead marked its beginning. In the intervening centuries, state-sponsored public education has become a universal
public good, found in nearly every nook of the globe, sponsored
to some degree by every stable national government. And
whether one is in the United States, United Kingdom, or United
Arab Emirates, the provision of free, universal, and state-regulated education has become one of the standard measures of the
5. Merle Odgers, “Education and the American Philosophical Society,” Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 87, no. 1 (1943): 20–23. The website of the APS also
contains useful information on its founding and prominent members, at www.amphilsoc.
org. See also John L. Brooke, “Ancient Lodges and Self-Created Societies: Voluntary
Association and the Public Sphere in the Early Republic,” in Launching the “Extended
Republic”: The Federalist Era, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1996), 273–359; Bernard Fay, “Learned Societies in Europe and
America in the 18th Century,” American Historical Review 37 (1932): 255–266; and Verner
W. Crane, “The Club of Honest Whigs: Friends of Science and Liberty,” William and Mary
Quarterly, 3rd ser., 23 (1966): 210–233. On the presence of the university, see Nancy
Beadie, “ ‘Encouraging Useful Knowledge’ in the Early Republic: The Roles of State
Governments and Voluntary Organizations,” in The Founding Fathers, Education, and “The
Great Contest”: The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797, ed. Benjamin Justice
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 85–102; and Allen Oscar Hansen, Liberalism and
American Education in the Eighteenth Century (New York: MacMillan, 1926), 106.
6. Fay, “Learned Societies,” 261; and Gerald A. Danzer, “Has the Discovery of America Been
Useful or Hurtful to Mankind? Yesterday’s Questions and Today’s Students,” History Teacher
7, no. 2 (1974): 192–206.
7. Andrew Ahlgren and Carol M. Boyer, “Visceral Priorities: Roots of Confusion in Liberal
Education,” Journal of Higher Education 52 (1981): 173–181.
8. The New-Haven Gazette, and the Connecticut Magazine, August 24, 1786, 219, APSO.
9. “Introduction: Addressed to the Youth of These States,” The Christian’s, Scholar’s, and
Farmer’s Magazine, August 1775, 353, APSO; Saul Sack, “Liberal Education: What Was It?
What Is It?” History of Education Quarterly 2, no. 4 (1962): 210–224; and Ahlgren and
Boyer, “Visceral Priorities.”
10. Richard D. Brown, The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Educated Citizenry in
America 1650–1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and Richard D.
Brown, “Bulwark of Revolutionary Liberty: Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s Programs
for an Informed Citizenry,” in Thomas Jefferson and the Education of a Citizen, ed. James
Gilreath (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2002).
11. Bruce Kimball, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education (New
York: Teachers College Press, 1986).
12. David Tyack, Thomas James, and Aaron Benavot, Law and the Shaping of American
Education, 1785–1954 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 20–42; and Carl
Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York:
Hill & Wang, 1983), 182–190. On Massachusetts and Connecticut, see Benjamin Justice, “The
Place of Religion in Early National School Plans,” in Justice, Founding Fathers, 155–174.
13. “Commencement at Dartmouth College,” Worchester Magazine, Containing Politicks,
Miscellanies, Poetry, and News, October 1786, 344, APSO.
14. E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America (Boston:
University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 384–385.
15. APS Minute Book.
16. A team of researchers worked together to identify the contestants, including Kim Tolley,
Lisa Green, Eric Strome, Campbell Scribner, Nia Soumakis, Christina Davis, and Michael
Hevel. Their work, including transcripts of the original essays, may be found in Justice,
Founding Fathers.
17. See Justice, Founding Fathers, 205–217.
18. See Justice, Founding Fathers, 219–232.
19. See Justice, Founding Fathers, 233–238.
20. Early Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for the Promotion of Useful
Knowledge (Philadelphia: McCalla & Stavely, 1884), 258–260.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
37
SHARE MY LESSON
ILLUSTRATIONS BY DANIEL BAXTER
The Summer Slide—for Teachers?
EDUCATORS WANT TO PREVENT the
“summer slide” in academic skills that can
happen when students take a break from
school and shift their focus to hanging out
with friends, taking trips to the pool, and
enjoying other fun activities. But what
happens to educators when they take some
time off from the classroom? Do they
encounter a similar slide?
Many teachers may laugh at the notion
that summer sets them back. While it’s true
that teachers aren’t in the classroom each
day, summer is typically a time when they
still work: earning professional development credits, learning the new curriculum
being implemented in September, taking
on tutoring jobs, and planning for a
successful school year. The two months
educators have off does not feel like much
of a break. Instead, summer seems like a
short amount of time to accomplish
everything they are too busy to tackle
during the school year.
Share My Lesson, well known for being
a resource for finding free preK–12 lesson
plans and activities in all subject areas, will
help educators get the most out of their
time away from the classroom by launching “Summer of Learning.”
This summer, Share My Lesson will offer
a variety of ways that educators can stay
connected—even on those trips to the
beach. Summer of Learning will provide
educators several new areas of content to
explore and help them build a new library
of lessons and ideas, including collections
focused on professional development and
parental involvement. Advice from Share
My Lesson partners, bloggers, and teachers
will offer perspectives on topics like
homework and teaching students with
disabilities.
We’ll also provide resources on digital
trends in education and how to network
with educators online, among other ideas
for both inside and outside the classroom.
And, of course, the summer would not be
complete without a contest and giveaways—found weekly on ShareMyLesson.
com, Twitter, and Facebook.
Because professional development lies at
the heart of summer learning for educators,
Share My Lesson will offer four days of free
online professional development from top
38 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
education leaders during June and July.
There will be sessions for everyone,
including new teachers. And the best part?
You receive one professional development
credit for each session you attend.
Here is the lineup: On June 11, learn
about how to keep students engaged
during summer break. On June 25, tune in
for a day of professional development just
for those who teach the humanities. On
July 9, professional development will be
specifically targeted to STEM (science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics)
educators. And on July 22, the series wraps
up with presentations on the foundations
of teaching, perfect for those new to the
profession.
Want to connect with your peers in
person this summer? Then attend some
events Share My Lesson will be offering at
the International Society for Technology in
Education conference in Philadelphia, as
well as at EdSurge and the AFT TEACH
conference, both in Washington, D.C.
No matter what adventures you have
planned, avoid the summer slide. Sign up
for Share My Lesson and stay up to date
with Summer of Learning!
–THE SHARE MY LESSON TEAM
TOOLS FOR TEACHERS
Unaccompanied Children in Schools
SINCE 2014, more than 62,000 unaccompanied children—those entering the United
States on their own, without parents or
guardians—have been detained crossing the
border with Mexico. The vast majority come
from El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras,
where violence, poverty, and unemployment have risen to alarming levels in recent
years. Although U.S. schools have a long
history of educating immigrant students,
the arrival of unaccompanied minors from
Central America in such large and unprecedented numbers presents unique challenges to educators.
Students who have crossed the border
unaccompanied by an adult have undergone long, dangerous, and traumatic
journeys before arriving here. They may be
held in detention centers far away from
family, or they may be living with relatives
they haven’t seen in years, if ever. When
they’re not in school, they may be working,
caring for a younger sibling, or, if they’ve
been detained, attending deportation
hearings as mandated by federal law. Such
stressful circumstances can make it even
more difficult for them to concentrate on
their studies.
Schools are required to meet the
educational needs of all students, immigrants or otherwise, so if you feel the needs
of your students are not being met, please
contact your school’s resource teacher for
English language learners (ELLs), your school
administrators, or your state officials. In
addition, community, faith-based, and
legal-aid organizations may be willing and
able to provide assistance.
For more information, visit http://go.aft.
org/AE215tft1, where you’ll find materials
jointly developed by the AFT and Colorín
Colorado, an online resource for educators
and parents of ELLs. Also, see www.bit.ly/
UnaccompaniedTips for advice on how to:
1. Understand the context of your students’
immigration experiences.
2. Lay the foundation for a strong personal
relationship with your immigrant
students.
3. Establish contact with your students’
families or guardians.
4. Help build a strong support network.
5. Reach out to ELL specialists in your school
or district.
6. Look for ways for students to share
information about their experiences,
language, and culture.
7. Understand your students’ challenges
and strengths.
8. Offer your students opportunities to use
their first language.
9. Educate yourself about the experience of
unaccompanied minors.
10. Find out what else is happening in your
community to support your students.
–AFT EDUCATIONAL ISSUES DEPARTMENT
RESOURCES
SHANKER INSTITUTE’S EARLY CHILDHOOD COLLECTION
The Albert Shanker Institute recently launched a website with
newly available, free resources for early childhood educators.
The collection includes the “Let’s Talk” series of Common Core
State Standards–aligned modules. Spanning oral language
development, early literacy, early science, and early mathematics, “Let’s Talk” is designed to strengthen the ability of early
childhood educators to impart rich, academic content that
young children are fully capable of learning and especially eager
to explore. Also featured are materials on the Preschool Educational Environment Rating System (PEERS). Designed for use by
practitioners as well as administrators, PEERS is a method for
examining the quality of instruction in preschool settings (and
presents a much fuller picture than other rating scales). The
Shanker Institute’s early childhood education collection, which
continues to grow, is located at http://go.aft.org/AE215res1.
NAVIGATING COMMON CORE MATH
A new online tool called the Textbook Navigator/Journal helps
teachers tie textbook lessons to the Common Core State Standards in mathematics. Created by Michigan State University’s
Center for the Study of Curriculum under the direction of
William H. Schmidt, the Navigator encompasses 34 math
textbook series to help teachers determine which standards are
covered in which textbook lessons. The Navigator also allows
teachers to select a given grade-level Common Core standard in
math and then view all of the textbook lessons focusing on that
standard. In effect, the Navigator creates a table of contents for a
textbook that is defined in terms of the standards and not the
topics. In this way, teachers can decide for themselves in what
order they wish to cover the textbook lessons (and which lessons
they can and probably should skip). If there are no textbook
lessons covering a particular standard, the Navigator will direct
teachers to several free, online sources of curricular materials.
For more information or to register for the tool (only Chrome
and Safari browsers are supported), visit www.bit.ly/1JBjUty.
THE IMPACT OF “SNOW DAYS” AND “DAYS ABSENT”
In the Summer 2015 issue of Education Next, Joshua Goodman,
assistant professor of public policy at Harvard University’s
Kennedy School of Government, explains why “days absent” are
a much different animal than “snow days” when it comes to
student academic performance. According to Goodman, studies
show that “student absences sharply reduce student achievement, particularly in math, but school closings appear to have
little impact.” That’s not to suggest that instructional time doesn’t
matter, he stresses, just that schools and teachers are better
prepared “to deal with the coordinated disruptions caused by
snow days—much more so than they are [able] to handle the less
dramatic but more frequent disruptions caused by poor student
attendance.” The full article is available at www.educationnext.
org/defense-snow-days.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
39
As we approach the 2016 presidential election,
ELECTION 2016:
YOU DECIDE.
working families want to know about the issues
at stake and where the candidates stand.
We’ve put together information* on leading
declared and potential candidates and their
positions on issues critical to AFT members and
the communities they serve.† Read and consider
carefully. Then let us know who you think
deserves the AFT’s endorsement and support.
Visit aft.org/election2016.
It’s your union. It’s your voice. You decide.
Higher
Education
Affordable
Care Act
Labor/Jobs/
Economy
Retirement
Security
Led the Obama
administration’s $500
million initiative to
create and expand
innovative partnerships
between community
colleges and businesses
to train workers with the
skills employers need.
Strongly supported and
advocated for the
ACA: The ACA gives
“the American people
more freedom and
control over their
healthcare choices,
improving the quality of
the care that they
receive and reducing
cost, all by building on
the best of our private
insurance system.”
Supports raising the minimum
wage and is sharply critical
of rising income inequality.
Opposes privatizing
Social Security,
cutting benefits
and raising the
retirement age.
Leader of “Too Small to Fail,”
an effort to improve the health
and well-being of children from
birth to age 5. Supports
increased Title I funding for
schools in need. Opposes
private school vouchers.
Has fought to expand
financial aid for
low-income college
students.
Is committed to
preserving and
improving the ACA.
Favors raising the minimum
wage and is an avowed
union supporter. “When I’m
president, we’re going to
stand up for unions. We’re
going to make sure they can
organize for fair wages and
good working conditions.”
Opposes cutting
Social Security
benefits, privatizing
the program and
raising the retirement
age.
Supports comprehensive immigration
reform with a pathway
to citizenship.
As governor, invested record
amounts in Maryland’s public
schools. Under O’Malley,
funding increased by 37
percent.
Increased state funding
to allow Maryland
colleges and universities
to freeze tuition from
2007–2011.
Supports increasing the
minimum wage.
Opposes privatizing
Social Security and
instead supports
expanding the
benefit.
Supports comprehensive immigration
reform with a pathway
to citizenship.
K–12 Education
Longtime supporter of
increased federal funding for
critical preK–12 education
programs.
A firm opponent of private
school vouchers.
BIDEN
CLINTON
O’MALLEY
Supports the ACA.
Maryland was one of
the first states to set up
a health insurance
exchange.
Opposes private school
vouchers.
Signed the Fix America’s
Schools Today (FAST) Act of
2011.
Co-sponsored an amendment
to the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act for
increased funding.
Co-sponsored the
Student Loan
Affordability Act, which
extended the reduced
interest rate for Stafford
student loans.
SANDERS
* Sources and citations are available in the online version at aft.org/election2016.
†
This chart reflects a brief snapshot of the candidates’ positions.
40 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
Introduced the
American Health
Security Act, which
would guarantee
healthcare as a human
right and provide every
U.S. citizen and
permanent resident
with healthcare
coverage and services
through a stateadministered,
single-payer program.
Immigration
Supports comprehensive immigration
reform with a pathway
to citizenship.
Supports the DREAM
Act.
Supports strengthening
collective bargaining rights.
In 2007, signed an
executive order to grant
collective bargaining rights
to healthcare aides and child
care workers.
Supports raising the minimum
wage. Is also a strong
supporter of expanded
collective bargaining rights
for public employees.
Supports the DREAM
Act.
Championed a
version of the DREAM
Act for Maryland’s
public colleges and
universities.
Promotes strengthening the social safety
net by expanding
Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid
and nutrition
programs.
Supports comprehensive immigration
reform with a pathway
to citizenship.
Supports the DREAM
Act.
K–12 Education
BUSH
As governor of Florida,
signed legislation to evaluate
students and teachers based
on high-stakes tests, create
for-profit charter and virtual
schools, and provide vouchers
for private and religious
schools.
Higher
Education
Affordable
Care Act
Labor/Jobs/
Economy
Retirement
Security
Ended affirmative
action in Florida’s
colleges and
universities, leading to
a sharp drop in minority
higher education
enrollment.
Does not support the
ACA and calls it
“flawed to the core.”
Has voiced opposition to
minimum wage increases.
Wants to weaken collective
bargaining rights for teachers
and other public employees,
and supports laws that
undermine the strength of
public and private sector
unions.
Advocates for
privatization of Social
Security and raising
the retirement age for
Social Security.
Opposed raising the
minimum wage.
Signed legislation that
slashed pensions by
$1.5 billion, which
the courts ruled was
in violation of state
law.
Opposes the Obama
administration’s
executive order
protecting undocumented children
(DACA and DAPA).
Immigration
Opposes the Obama
administration’s
executive order
protecting undocumented children
(DACA and DAPA).
Supports the DREAM
Act.
Launched the nation’s first
statewide voucher program.
As governor of New Jersey, cut
funding in 2011 budget,
which the state Supreme Court
ruled violated the state
constitution.
Cut state funding to
New Jersey colleges
and universities.
Supports turning federal
education dollars into vouchers
that can be used to fund
private schools.
Voted to cut Pell Grants
that help low-income
students attend college.
Opposed the ACA.
Opposed attempts to raise
the minimum wage.
Supports raising the
retirement age for
Social Security,
reducing the growth
rate of Social Security
benefits and
privatizing Social
Security.
Opposes the Obama
administration’s
executive order
protecting undocumented children
(DACA and DAPA).
As governor of Louisiana,
proposed budget for 2015
that keeps state funding with
no increase in six years.
Proposed hundreds
of millions of dollars
in cuts to higher
education, even though
public colleges and
universities in Louisiana
already receive less
money on a per-pupil
basis than in any other
state.
Opposed the ACA.
Opposes recent attempts to
raise the minimum wage.
Tried to eliminate
defined benefit
pensions for public
employees.
Opposes the Obama
administration’s
executive order
protecting undocumented children
(DACA and DAPA).
As governor of Ohio,
proposed a massive expansion
of the state’s voucher program
that would have drained funds
from public schools and used
tax dollars to fund private
schools.
Cut state support to
higher education by 6
percent.
Opposed the ACA.
Through state Senate Bill 5,
attempted to wipe out
workplace rights for
teachers, firefighters and
other public employees. His
efforts were defeated by
popular referendum.
Supported legislation
that cut state funding
for employee
pensions.
Opposes the Obama
administration’s
executive order
protecting undocumented children
(DACA and DAPA).
Supports private school
vouchers. Would abolish the
U.S. Department of Education.
Voted to cut Pell Grants
that help low-income
students attend college.
Opposes the ACA and
has voted to repeal it.
Says we should abolish the
minimum wage. Opposes
collective bargaining rights,
and supports legislation
intended to hinder the
effectiveness of unions.
Would raise the
retirement age for
Social Security, and
supports what would
be the largest cuts to
Social Security in
U.S. history.
Opposes the Obama
administration’s
executive order
protecting undocumented children
(DACA and DAPA).
Voted to cut Pell Grants
that help low-income
students attend college.
Opposed the ACA.
Opposes increasing the
minimum wage and doesn’t
think that the minimum wage
law works.
Supports raising the
retirement age for
Social Security.
Opposes the Obama
administration’s
executive order
protecting undocumented children
(DACA and DAPA).
As governor, slashed
state contributions to
employee pensions.
Opposes the Obama
administration’s
executive order
protecting undocumented children
(DACA and DAPA).
Opposed the ACA,
calling it a “failed
federal program.”
Was a vocal supporter of
Scott Walker’s attacks in
Wisconsin on public
employee rights.
CHRISTIE
CRUZ
JINDAL
KASICH
PAUL
Implemented a private school
tuition voucher program, which
was ruled unconstitutional by a
Louisiana judge.
Supports legislation that
would wipe out payroll
deductions for union
members and silence the
voice of teachers and other
public employees.
Sponsored federal voucher
legislation.
Presided over a $2.3 billion
cut to Florida education as
speaker of the Florida House.
Supports federal voucher
legislation.
As speaker of the Florida
House, sponsored a bill
attacking union rights.
RUBIO
Supports the expansion of
voucher programs that drain
funds from public schools and
use taxpayer dollars to fund
private schools.
WALKER
In 2015, slashed $300
million from Wisconsin’s
higher education
budgets.
Opposed the ACA.
In 2011, pushed legislation
that stripped public
employees of collective
bargaining rights; in 2015,
supported and signed a
so-called right-to-work bill in
Wisconsin designed to
hinder and harass private
sector unions.
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
41
NEWS IN BRIEF
BIPARTISAN ESEA BILL SHOWS PROMISE
HELPING IMMIGRANT FAMILIES
“A big deal” is how AFT President Randi Weingarten characterized the rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee. The panel finished its work on April 16 with a bill
Weingarten called “the most positive development we’ve seen
in public education policy in years—because of both its content
and the committee’s very intentional move to leave partisanship
at the door.” The bill, which has moved to the full Senate,
includes major gains for English language learners and early
childhood education. Weingarten also noted that the bill
“restores the law’s original intent” of addressing poverty and
educational inequality through targeted funding. “While not
perfect—no compromise is—the bill moves away from the counterproductive focus on sanctions and high-stakes tests, and ends
federalized teacher evaluations and school closings,” she said.
Weingarten contrasted this promising federal action with growing acrimony in states like New York, in a recent column available at http://go.aft.org/AE215news1.
On April 2, the AFL-CIO officially launched “We Rise!” a national
initiative to help immigrant workers. The effort will equip
unions around the country to empower such workers and their
families by helping them apply for the Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Deferred Action for Parents
of Americans (DAPA) programs. “We Rise!” will also encourage
qualified legal permanent residents to become U.S. citizens.
More than 200 labor activists from 23 different unions and 27
states gathered in Washington, D.C., this spring for three days
of training. This effort builds on the AFT’s initiative “Reclaiming
the Promise of the American DREAM: Educators, Parents, and
Students Working Together on the Implementation of DACA
and DAPA,” which encompasses 25 locals in 16 states. Meanwhile, on April 7, the AFT
joined with dozens of states
and organizations to file an
amicus brief in Texas v. United
States of America, urging the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Fifth Circuit to lift the stay on
President Obama’s executive
action on immigration. The
brief is available at http://
go.aft.org/AE215news4.
CORINTHIAN SHUTDOWN
Corinthian Colleges announced on April 25 that it will immediately close its remaining campuses, fueling calls from student
advocates, lawmakers, the AFT, and other organizations for U.S.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to relieve Corinthian students of crippling student debt. The debacle also is bringing
attention to the PRO Students Act, a federal bill to protect students from predatory, deceptive, and fraudulent practices,
particularly in the for-profit college sector. Corinthian was
accused of charging students exorbitant tuition and fined $30
million by the Department of Education for padding job placement rates. “More than a marketing tool to lure new students,
solid job placement rates allow the company to satisfy the
accrediting bodies that oversee its
nearly 100 U.S. campuses, while Michael Adorno-Miranda,
enabling Corinthian to tap federal speaking at a press event in
student aid coffers—a source of April, is one of the
Corinthian 100, students
funding that has reached nearly who are refusing to pay
$10 billion over the last decade,” back their student loans
a Huffington Post investigation because their “education”
at Corinthian Colleges gave
reveals. Read the story at www. them no useful credenhuff.to/1cwBHwH.
tials—just lots of debt.
HOLDING A TESTING GIANT ACCOUNTABLE
AFT President Randi Weingarten traveled to Pearson’s annual
shareholder meeting in London on April 24 to join union leaders, parents, and education advocates who are demanding that
the company measure the social, emotional, and academic
impact of its education practices. “While I recognize Pearson
has a duty to its shareholders to be profitable, my question
centers on another obligation: to conduct business in a way that
befits the world’s largest education company—that is, in the
words of its president, John Fallon, where every product must
be measured by its ‘social impact.’ ” The AFT, the United Kingdom’s National Union of Teachers, and other organizations also
sent a letter to Pearson outlining their concerns. Read the letter
at http://go.aft.org/AE215news3.
TAKING STOCK OF TEACHER PREPARATION
AFT STAFF
Some of the nation’s leading voices on education policy offered
guidance on effective teacher preparation at the 2015 Teaching
& Learning Conference in Washington, D.C. Among the speakers at the March event were Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University; Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry
Holliday; and Sharon Robinson, president and CEO of the
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Their
plenary session was moderated by AFT President Randi Weingarten, who emphasized that teaching, like any other profession, must treat induction and preparation as a core mission.
The panel highlighted some of the components teachers need
to succeed: high-quality preparation rooted in rich clinical
experience, continuous supports for new teachers, and opportunities for growth. Details are available at http://go.aft.org/
AE215news2.
42 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
Importance of Tenure
(Continued from page 11)
7. Thomas Geoghegan, Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why
America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement (New York:
The New Press, 2014), 124.
8. Joshua Lewis, “The Promise of Teacher Tenure Reform,”
Washington Post, August 15, 2014.
9. Bruce Reed, “Equal Opportunity Under Law,” RealClearEducation, June 11, 2014, www.realcleareducation.com/
articles/2014/06/11/equal_opportunity_under_law.html.
10. Erwin Chemerinsky, “Teacher Tenure: Wrong Target,”
New York Daily News, October 23, 2014.
11. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 220.
12. Richard M. Ingersoll, Who Controls Teachers’ Work?
Power and Accountability in America’s Schools (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 109.
13. Vergara v. State of California, case no. BC484642 (Cal.
Sup. Ct. L.A. County, judgment filed August 27, 2014), 11.
14. New York State School Boards Association, Quality
Educators in Every School (Latham: New York State School
Boards Association, 2008), 2.
15. Terry M. Moe, Special Interest: Teachers Unions and
America’s Public Schools (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press, 2011), 170.
16. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 214.
17. “Average Number of Public School Teachers and Average
Number of Public School Teachers Who Were Dismissed in
the Previous Year or Did Not Have Their Contracts Renewed
Based on Poor Performance, by Tenure Status of Teachers and
State: 2007–08,” in National Center for Education Statistics,
Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), 2008, table 8.
18. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 8.
19. “Layoffs and Discharges: Total Private,” in Bureau of
Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey
(JOLTS), ser. JTS10000000LDR.
20. David B. Cohen, “The Problem with the ‘Problem with
Tenure’ for Teachers,” Answer Sheet (blog), Washington Post,
August 26, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answersheet/wp/2014/08/26/the-problem-with-the-problem-withtenure-for-teachers.
21. Jessica Glazer, “Three Takeaways from The Colbert
Report’s Teacher-Tenure Talk,” Chalkbeat, August 1, 2014,
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2014/08/01/three-takeaways-from-campbellbrowns-appearance-on-the-colbert-report.
22. Ashley Hupfl, “Tenure Track: Has New York Already Fixed
Its Teacher Disciplinary Hearings Process?,” City & State,
August 27, 2014.
23. American Federation of Teachers, “AFT Adopts Kenneth
Feinberg’s Procedures for Handling Teacher Wrongdoing
Allegations,” news release, February 7, 2011, www.aft.org/
press-release/aft-adopts-kenneth-feinbergs-procedureshandling-teacher-wrongdoing.
37. Leo Casey, “Why Teachers’ Unions & Due Process
Matter,” Bridging Differences (blog), Education Week,
September 25, 2014, http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/
Bridging-Differences/2014/09/today_leo_casey_of_the.html.
69. Philissa Cramer, “Tenure Approval Rate Ticks Up in First
Decisions under de Blasio,” Chalkbeat, November 7, 2014,
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2014/11/07/teacher-tenure-rate-ticksup-in-first-decisions-under-de-blasio.
38. Cynthia L. Estlund, “How Wrong Are Employees about
Their Rights, and Why Does It Matter?,” New York University
Law Review 77 (2002): 9. See also Pauline T. Kim, “Norms,
Learning, and Law: Exploring the Influences of Workers’
Legal Knowledge,” University of Illinois Law Review 1999,
no. 2 (1999): 447.
70. “Number and Percentage Distribution of Teachers in
Public and Private Elementary and Secondary Schools, by
Selected Teacher Characteristics: Selected Years, 1987–88
through 2011–12,” in National Center for Education
Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 2013, table 209.10;
and Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 8.
39. Estlund, “How Wrong Are Employees,” 8.
71. Ann Duffett, Steve Farkas, Andrew J. Rotherham, and
Elena Silva, Waiting to Be Won Over: Teachers Speak on the
Profession, Unions, and Reform (Washington, DC: Education
Sector, 2008), 1 and 9.
40. Casey, “Why Teachers’ Unions & Due Process Matter.”
41. Peter Greene, “It’s Not the Firing; It’s the Threatening,”
Huffington Post, August 5, 2014.
42. Leslie Brody, “New York City Teacher Tenure Dispute in
Court,” Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2015.
43. Erwin Chemerinsky and Catherine Fisk, “Eliminating
Teacher Tenure Will Not Improve Public Education,”
Sacramento Bee, June 22, 2014.
44. Jodi Wilgoren, “Kansas Board Approves Challenges to
Evolution,” New York Times, November 9, 2005.
45. Associated Press, “Kansas: Anti-Evolution Guidelines Are
Repealed,” New York Times, February 14, 2007.
46. Editorial, “Politicized Curriculum in Texas,” New York
Times, May 25, 2010.
72. Paul E. Peterson, “The Public Turns Against Teacher
Tenure,” Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2014.
73. Albert Shanker, “The Peer Evaluation Program: Trashing a
State Treasure?,” Where We Stand, New York Times,
February 25, 1990, Where We Stand Online Archive, http://
locals.nysut.org/shanker.
74. Randi Weingarten, quoted in David Herszenhorn, “Failing
City Teachers Face a Faster Ax,” New York Times, January 15,
2004.
75. Duffett et al., Waiting to Be Won Over, 9.
76. Moe, Special Interest, 101–102.
77. Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal, 282–288.
47. Bob Bernick, “Utah Governor Vetoes Bill to Curb Sex
Education in Schools,” Reuters, March 17, 2012.
48. California Teachers Association and California Federation
of Teachers, intervenors’ posttrial brief in Vergara v. State of
California, served April 10, 2014, 2n4.
49. Greene, “It’s Not the Firing.”
78. Thomas Toch and Robert Rothman, Rush to Judgment:
Teacher Evaluation in Public Education (Washington, DC:
Education Sector, 2008), 8–9.
79. Albert Shanker, quoted in Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal,
287.
80. Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal, 284–288.
50. Sarah Jaffe, “ ‘Poster Child for Tenure’: Why Teacher
Agustin Morales Really Lost His Job,” Salon, October 13,
2014.
81. Michael Alison Chandler, “Montgomery Teachers Union
Wields Power,” Washington Post, March 9, 2012.
51. Ingersoll, Who Controls Teachers’ Work?
52. Valerie E. Lee and Julia B. Smith, “Collective Responsibility
for Learning and Its Effect on Gains and Achievement and
Engagement for Early Secondary Students,” American
Journal of Education 104 (1996): 103–147.
53. National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future,
Policy Brief: The High Cost of Teacher Turnover (Washington,
DC: National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future,
2007); and Matthew Ronfeldt, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna
Loeb, and James Wyckoff, How Teacher Turnover Harms
Student Achievement, NBER Working Paper 17176
(Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research,
2011).
54. Casey, “Why Teachers’ Unions & Due Process Matter.”
55. Greene, “It’s Not the Firing.”
56. “Teacher Trends,” Fast Facts, National Center for
Education Statistics, accessed April 7, 2015, http://nces.ed.
gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28.
57. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 264.
82. Toch and Rothman, Rush to Judgment; and Charles J.
Kerchner, Julia Koppich, and Joseph G. Weeres, United Mind
Workers: Unions and Teaching in the Knowledge Society (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publications, 1997).
83. Susan Moore Johnson, John P. Papay, Sarah E. Fiarman,
Mindy Sick Munger, and Emily Kalejs Qazilbash, Teacher to
Teacher: Realizing the Potential of Peer Assistance and
Review (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress,
2010), 2–3 and 15–16.
84. Jordan Moeny, “Researchers Offer Prescriptions for
Retaining Teachers,” Teaching Now (blog), Education Week,
October 10, 2014, http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/
teaching_now/2014/10/wrong_diagnosis_wrong_
prescription_for_understaffing.html.
85. Stephanie Simon, “Feds Push for Equal Access to Quality
Teachers,” Politico, December 23, 2014, www.politico.com/
story/2014/12/feds-aim-to-redistribute-quality-teachers113753.html.
86. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 184.
24. Stephen Sawchuk, “Due Process Laws Vary for Teachers
by State,” Education Week, September 24, 2014.
58. Nicholas Kristof, “The American Dream Is Leaving
America,” New York Times, October 26, 2014.
87. Richard D. Kahlenberg, All Together Now: Creating
Middle-Class Schools through Public School Choice
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), 47–76.
25. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 85.
59. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 264.
88. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 180.
26. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 85.
60. Moe, Special Interest, 172.
27. Diane Ravitch, The Great School Wars: New York City,
1805–1973; A History of the Public Schools as Battlefield of
Social Change (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 85.
61. Moe, Special Interest, 442n58.
89. Eric A. Hanushek, John F. Kain, and Steven G. Rivkin,
“Why Public Schools Lose Teachers,” Journal of Human
Resources 39 (2004): 326–354.
28. Albert Shanker, quoted in Richard D. Kahlenberg, Tough
Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions,
Race, and Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press,
2007), 283.
29. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 84.
30. Marjorie Murphy, Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA,
1900–1980 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 95.
31. Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 96.
32. See “Asked to Suspend Pacifist Teacher,” New York
Times, January 23, 1918; “Trial of Quaker Teacher Is
Ordered,” New York Times, March 14, 1918; “Try Quaker
Teacher for Views on War,” New York Times, May 16, 1918;
and “Drop Two Teachers for Views on War,” New York Times,
June 20, 1918.
33. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 112.
34. Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 177.
35. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 112.
36. Moshe Marvit, email communication with author, March
2, 2015.
62. Ken Futernick, “State Needs a ‘Grand Bargain’ on
Teachers’ Effectiveness, Obstacles,” Los Angeles Times,
September 20, 2014.
90. Stephen Sawchuk, “Transferring Top Teachers Has
Benefits,” Education Week, November 13, 2013.
63. Jesse Rothstein, “Taking On Teacher Tenure Backfires,”
New York Times, June 13, 2014.
64. Alyssa Hadley Dunn, “Fact-Checking Campbell Brown:
What She Said, What the Research Really Shows,” Answer
Sheet (blog), Washington Post, August 3, 2014.
65. Brian Jones, “Protections of Teacher Tenure Do Not Hurt
Students,” Room for Debate, New York Times, June 12,
2014, www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/11/doestenure-protect-bad-teachers-or-good-schools/protections-ofteacher-tenure-do-not-hurt-students.
66. Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal, 283; and Byron Auguste, Paul
Kihn, and Matt Miller, Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and
Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching; An
International and Market Research-Based Perspective
(Washington, DC: McKinsey & Company, 2010), 20.
67. Vergara, case no. BC484642 at 10.
68. Al Baker, “Many New York City Teachers Denied Tenure in
Policy Shift,” New York Times, August 17, 2012.
91. Robert Bifulco, Casey D. Cobb, and Courtney Bell, “Can
Interdistrict Choice Boost Student Achievement? The Case of
Connecticut’s Interdistrict Magnet Program,” Education
Evaluation and Policy Analysis 31 (2009): 323–345.
92. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 3.
93. Duffett et al., Waiting to Be Won Over, 8.
94. Lyndsey Layton, “Center for Union Facts Says Randi
Weingarten Is Ruining Nation’s Schools,” Washington Post,
September 24, 2014.
95. Jonathan Chait, “Learning Curve: Teachers’ Unions Are
Selfish, Dangerous, and Necessary,” New Republic, April 7,
2011, 2.
96. Richard Rothstein, Class and Schools: Using Social,
Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White
Achievement Gap (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004).
97. James S. Coleman, Ernest Q. Campbell, Carol J. Hobson,
et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity (Washington, DC:
National Center for Educational Statistics, 1966).
AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
43
Supporting Students with ASD
(Continued from page 19)
which we describe in detail the review procedures. See Connie
Wong, Samuel L. Odom, Kara Hume, et al., Evidence-Based
Practices for Children, Youth, and Young Adults with Autism
Spectrum Disorder (Chapel Hill, NC: Frank Porter Graham
Child Development Institute, 2014), http://autismpdc.fpg.unc.
edu/node/21; and Connie Wong, Samuel L. Odom, Kara
Hume, et al., “Evidence-Based Practices for Children, Youth,
and Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A
Comprehensive Review,” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, published electronically January 13, 2015,
doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2351-z.
collect data on an ongoing basis about
student progress. If an educator is implementing the practice appropriately (as
measured by the fidelity checklists) and the
student does not make progress over a 12. Samuel L. Odom, Julie L. Thompson, Susan Hedges, et al.,
“Technology-Aided Interventions and Instruction for
reasonable period of time (as shown by the Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder,” Journal of
and Developmental Disorders, published electronically
student’s data), the educator should con- Autism
December 3, 2014, doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2320-6.
sider other EBPs that have generated posi- 13. Ann W. Cox, Matthew E. Brock, Samuel L. Odom, et al.,
tive outcomes in the student’s goal area “National Professional Development Center on Autism
Spectrum Disorders: An Emerging National Educational
(e.g., interacting socially with peers).
Strategy,” in Autism Services across America: Road Maps for
State and National Education, Research, and
The increased prevalence of ASD and Improving
Training Programs, ed. Peter Doehring (Baltimore: Brookes,
2013),
249–268.
the interest in evidence-based practices
are substantially intertwined. Increasingly, 14. David L. Sackett, William M. C. Rosenberg, J. A. Muir
Gray, R. Brian Haynes, and W. Scott Richardson, “Evidence
educators will teach students like Victor Based Medicine: What It Is and What It Isn’t,” British Medical
and Rosa. Fortunately, the EBP movement Journal 312 (1996): 71–72.
15. Wong et al., Evidence-Based Practices for Children.
in education has provided the necessary
tools for building effective programs for
students with ASD. These practices alone, Influence of A Nation at Risk
though, will not give them the supports (Continued from page 26)
they need. They must be combined with
Cases (Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, 1990); Paul Manna,
attention to program quality, targeted pro- and
“Federalism, Agenda Setting, and the Development of Federal
fessional development, and educator judg- Education Policy, 1965–2001” (PhD diss., University of
2003); James W. Guthrie and Matthew
ment and expertise, the foundation for Wisconsin–Madison,
G. Springer, “A Nation at Risk Revisited: Did ‘Wrong’
Reasoning
Result
in
‘Right’
Results? At What Cost?,” Peabody
helping all students, not only those with
Journal of Education 79, no. 1 (2004): 7–35; and Patricia
ASD, succeed.
☐ Albjerg Graham and David T. Gordon, A Nation Reformed?
Endnotes
1. Jon Baio, “Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder among
Children Aged 8 Years—Autism and Developmental
Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 Sites, United States,
2010,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 63, no. SS-2
(March 28, 2014): 1–21.
2. Baio, “Prevalence of Autism”; and Elisabeth M. Dykens and
Miriam Lense, “Intellectual Disabilities and Autism Spectrum
Disorder: A Cautionary Note,” in Autism Spectrum Disorders,
ed. David Amaral, Daniel Geschwind, and Geraldine Dawson
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 263–269.
3. Baio, “Prevalence of Autism.”
4. M. Rutter, “Incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorders:
Changes Over Time and Their Meaning,” Acta Pædiatrica 94
(2005): 2–15.
5. Baio, “Prevalence of Autism.”
6. Alison Presmanes Hill, Katharine E. Zuckerman, and Eric
Fombonne, “Epidemiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders,” in
Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders,
4th ed., vol. 1, Diagnosis, Development, and Brain
Mechanisms, ed. Fred R. Volkmar, Rhea Paul, Sally J. Rogers,
and Kevin A. Pelphrey (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2014), 57–96.
7. The latest information on prevalence and other
characteristics associated with ASD was published in a report
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. See
Baio, “Prevalence of Autism.”
8. Samuel L. Odom, Lana Collet-Klingenberg, Sally J. Rogers,
and Deborah D. Hatton, “Evidence-Based Practices in
Interventions for Children and Youth with Autism Spectrum
Disorders,” Preventing School Failure 54 (2010): 275–282.
9. Russell Gersten, Lynn S. Fuchs, Donald Compton, Michael
Coyne, Charles Greenwood, and Mark S. Innocenti, “Quality
Indicators for Group Experimental and Quasi-Experimental
Research in Special Education,” Exceptional Children 71
(2005): 149–164; and Robert H. Horner, Edward G. Carr,
James Halle, Gail McGee, Samuel Odom, and Mark Wolery,
“The Use of Single-Subject Research to Identify EvidenceBased Practice in Special Education,” Exceptional Children 71
(2005): 165–179.
10. Odom et al., “Evidence-Based Practices in Interventions.”
11. We have published an online report and a journal article in
American Education 20 Years after “A Nation at Risk”
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2003).
2. Frederick M. Wirt and Michael W. Kirst, Schools in Conflict:
The Politics of Education (Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, 1982).
3. Edward Fiske, “Commission on Education Warns ‘Tide of
Mediocrity’ Imperils U.S.,” New York Times, April 27, 1983.
4. Guthrie and Springer, “A Nation at Risk Revisited,” 12.
5. Guthrie and Springer, “A Nation at Risk Revisited,” 14.
6. David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Manufactured
Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public
Schools (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995).
7. Terrel H. Bell, The Thirteenth Man: A Reagan Cabinet
Memoir (New York: Free Press, 1988).
8. The two other members of the commission were Charles A.
Foster, who was the immediate past president of the
Foundation for Teaching Economics, and Annette Y. Kirk, wife
of conservative intellectual Russell Kirk, whose affiliation at
the time was given as Kirk Associates.
9. “Commission Member Suggests Education in U.S. Still at
Risk,” Education Week, April 23, 2003.
10. Bell’s The Thirteenth Man provides the most detailed
account of the interplay between the commission and
President Reagan’s office.
11. Lynn Olson, “Inside ‘A Nation at Risk,’” Education Week,
April 27, 1988.
12. Olson, “Inside ‘A Nation at Risk.’”
13. Margot Slate and Wayne Biddle, “Reagan Gets a Scathing
Report on Education,” New York Times, May 1, 1983.
14. With the benefit of hindsight, some critics have noted that
the most fundamental assertion of the report, that the
nation’s economic future was tied to its educational future,
has been called into question; see Guthrie and Springer, “A
Nation at Risk Revisited.”
15. Edward B. Fiske, “‘Tide of Mediocrity’ May Not Be Rising
as Fast as It Seems,” New York Times, September 18, 1983.
16. Berliner and Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis, 12.
17. College Entrance Examination Board, On Further
Examination: Report of the Advisory Panel on the Scholastic
Aptitude Test Score Decline (New York: College Entrance
Exam Board, 1977), 75.
18. Task Force on Education for Economic Growth, Action for
44 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SUMMER 2015
Excellence: A Comprehensive Plan to Improve Our Nation’s
Schools (Denver: Education Commission of the States, 1983);
Task Force on Federal Elementary and Secondary Education
Policy, Making the Grade (New York: Twentieth Century Fund,
1983); Ernest L. Boyer and Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, High School: A Report on
Secondary Education in America (New York: Harper & Row,
1983); John I. Goodlad, A Place Called School: Prospects for
the Future (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984); and Theodore R.
Sizer, Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of the American
High School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984).
19. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster,
2000).
20. Jennifer L. Hochschild, “Rethinking Accountability
Politics,” in No Child Left Behind? The Politics and Practice of
School Accountability, ed. Paul E. Peterson and Martin R.
West (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003),
107–123. Hochschild argued that poor school performance is
not a compelling explanation for the reform movement,
pointing to significant evidence that some key indicators have
in fact improved over the past 30 years.
21. For three perspectives on the education-economy debate,
see Guthrie and Springer, “A Nation at Risk Revisited”;
Douglas N. Harris, Michael J. Handel, and Lawrence Mishel,
“Education and the Economy Revisited: How Schools Matter,”
Peabody Journal of Education 79, no. 1 (2004): 36–63; and
Eric A. Hanushek and Dennis D. Kimko, “Schooling,
Labor-Force Quality, and the Growth of Nations,” American
Economic Review 90 (2000): 1184–1208.
22. Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of
the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2005).
23. Denis P. Doyle and Terry W. Hartle, Excellence in
Education: The States Take Charge (Washington, DC:
American Enterprise Institute, 1985).
24. Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves
for 21st-Century Capitalism (New York: Knopf, 1991). Reich
argued that international economic success would be built on
educational success, with greater investment in schooling,
training, and retraining as the central policy strategies. Bill
Clinton adopted much of this rhetoric in his 1992 platform and
subsequently appointed Reich as his first secretary of labor.
25. Frederick M. Hess and Andrew Kelly, “Education and the
2004 Presidential Contest,” Politics of Education Association
Bulletin, Fall 2004, 1–6.
26. Jennifer Washburn, University, Inc.: The Corporate
Corruption of American Higher Education (New York: Basic
Books, 2006).
27. Joseph Van Harken, “Budgets Cut Student Experience,”
CNN.com, August 20, 2003, www.cnn.com/2003/
EDUCATION/08/13/sprj.sch.cuts/index.html.
28. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A
Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1983).
29. College Entrance Examination Board, On Further
Examination, 49.
30. College Entrance Examination Board, On Further
Examination, 47.
31. Berliner and Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis.
32. On effective schools, see Ronald Edmonds, “Effective
Schools for the Urban Poor,” Educational Leadership 37
(1979): 15. The quotation is from Doyle and Hartle, Excellence
in Education, 13.
33. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Good High School: Portraits
of Character and Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
34. Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of
Brooklyn against Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1985).
35. Ira Katznelson and Margaret Weir, Schooling for All: Class,
Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (New York:
Basic Books, 1985).
36. William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner
City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1987).
37. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s
Schools (New York: Crown, 1991); and Alex Kotlowitz, There
Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in
the Other America (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
38. Scattered efforts at desegregation by race and class do
continue to exist, but they are the exceptions to the rule. See
Gary Orfield, John T. Yun, and Civil Rights Project,
Resegregation in American Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Civil Rights Project, 1999).
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Tenure | Autism | Influence of A Nation at Risk | The Need for More Teachers of Color
The next year will be about honoring our past
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VOL. 39, NO. 2 | SUMMER 2015
Not many things live to be 100 years old. So
when they do, we celebrate! Ninety-nine years
ago, on May 9, 1916, the American Federation of
Teachers was founded in Chicago, when eight
local unions formed the AFT and were granted a
charter signed by American Federation of Labor
President Samuel Gompers. Leading up to the
AFT national convention in 2016, we will spend
the next year looking back on our rich history—
our struggles, our accomplishments, our
proudest moments—and celebrating how far we
have come and what lies ahead.